u/Mandyhiten

Backstory:

a Skool community I'm in is winding down. With the owner's OK, I built a Node script to archive everything before shutdown - pulls cookies from Chrome, walks the classroom, downloads every Loom embed and Skool-native Mux stream as a clean MP4. 130 lessons, 26 GB, fully organized by course → module → lesson.

Working on my Mac end-to-end.

The honest pitch: every paid community / course platform locks your content behind their servers. Skool, Circle, Whop, Kajabi, Mighty Networks, Teachable, Thinkific - same model, same risk. You paid for it, but you're renting access.

Plan would be:
Chrome extension + tiny native helper, distributed via Web Store. Cost to ship properly: -$200 in dev accounts + a few weeks of work. Maintenance burden ongoing.

Before I commit -
does the pain land? If you've paid into one of these platforms, would you use a tool that gives you a local copy of everything you've bought? What would make it a yes (price, platform support, ease of install)?

A Skool community I'm in is shutting down next month. ~10 courses, 130+ videos, stuff members paid serious money to access.

Owners told us we could back up before it goes dark, so I spent the weekend building a script for myself - runs on my Mac, pulls every lesson down as MP4s, organized by course and module.

Worked great. 26GB of paid content now sitting on my drive instead of evaporating with the community.

Got me thinking - every paid community has this risk. Skool, Circle, Whop, Kajabi, Mighty Networks, Teachable.

You drop $300-2k for access, watch 20% of it, and one day the founder pivots or pricing changes and you're locked out of stuff you paid for.
None of these platforms give you a "download my courses" button.

The script works locally for me right now. Thinking of polishing it into a Chrome extension+ small helper app so it's one-click for anyone - install it, sign into Skool/Circle/whatever in your browser, hit "archive," get all your courses on your drive.

Before I spend the time + money to ship it:

would you actually use this?
Have you been burned by losing access to a paid community before?
What platforms would you want it to support first?