Every "video to text" tool I tried wanted a sign-up, a subscription, or capped me at 30 seconds. So I built Scriptery — paste a link or upload a file, get a timestamped transcript, export TXT/SRT/VTT, no account. The interesting part isn't the product, it's that it runs at near-zero infrastructure cost, and I want to break down exactly how.
The constraint
One rule: the web app stays on Cloudflare's free tier. The only paid infra is a single $5/mo VPS. That constraint shaped every decision below.
The stack
One Cloudflare Worker serves everything — the SSR frontend (TanStack Start) and the /api/* backend (Hono) run in the same Worker. No separate server, no container.
