StellarCut: Building Human-In-The-Loop AI Audio Editing SaaS in 1 Week

A case study in rapid iteration, leveraging AI tools, and validating product ideas in the era of AI-assisted development.

The Problem I Solved

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How I Built It Fast

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What I Learned
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Overview

StellarCut is an AI-powered audio editing tool that turns messy recordings into polished content in minutes. Record audio, get an instant transcript powered by Speech-to-Text AI, and edit both the waveform and transcript in sync to remove awkward pauses, filler words, or stumbles by clipping the transcript.

  • Waveform & Transcript Editing
  • Built with AI (Lovable.dev)
  • Integrated ElevenLabs API
  • Lean approach
  • Built in 1 Week
  • Testing with real users

My Role

Starting from scratch as a product designer and builder, I identified a problem, shaped the product vision, directed development using AI, integrated the ElevenLabs API for transcription, and drove the full iteration cycle from launch to refined product.

The Insight

Content creators like podcasters, streamers, video producers will waste hours cleaning up audio recordings. They manually cut sections, deal with noisy recordings, and lose time to repetitive editing work. Meanwhile, AI tools for transcription and generation have become accessible, but no one was combining them into a seamless audio editor experience. This was the gap.

THE PROBLEM

Audio Editing Was Too Slow

I record a lot of podcasts, audio for videos, and more. Noise, filler words, and awkward pauses were eating up my editing time. Every tool felt either too manual or too limited. With AI, I could validate my idea quickly.

The Problematic Workflow

1

Record (often with background noise)

2

Manually edit audio waveforms (tedious, imprecise)

3

Hope to have caught all the filler words and stumbles

The average audio editing experience is done exclusively with waveforms

THE BUILD

Could I validate an AI SaaS product idea rapidly using AI-powered development tools?

Instead of spending months hiring a team or building alone, I used Lovable.dev to scaffold the interface and manage the component structure, then integrated the ElevenLabs Speech-to-Text API for transcription.

Why This Matters for 2026: I rapidly validated that the core idea, a workflow using synced transcripts + waveform editing was actually valuable. In 2026, product designers who can quickly prototype, test, and iterate using AI tools are going to be the ones shipping real products.

StellarCut interface with waveform and transcript

MY EXPERIMENT

Modern Product Designers Ship With AI, Not Without It

I didn't wait for perfect research or unlimited budget. I saw a gap, understood what tools were available, and shipped something useful in a week. That's the skillset 2026 demands.

Try StellarCut

NOTE

Why Human-in-the-Loop?

For this project, I wanted to leverage AI in smart ways. It's often shoehorned it into everything. But StellarCut uses AI in a way where humans work alongside it to obtain transparent, automated outcomes. This leads to faster results, but also results leading to happy users.