Built by an editor who needed it to exist.
Doza Assist is not a startup's guess at what editors want. It's one documentary filmmaker's answer to twenty hours of interviews and a deadline — turned into a tool anyone can own.
Doza Assist is made by Chris Cardoza, a documentary filmmaker with 15 years of editing for clients including Reebok, TB12 Sports, Yo-Yo Ma, and ICA Boston. He built it because no existing tool worked the way a working editor needs: on your machine, in your voice, without a meter running. The core engine is open source under MIT.
Why this tool exists
The problem wasn't finding an AI tool — the market is full of them. The problem was what they asked in exchange. Upload the footage to someone's server. Pay by the minute or by the credit. Accept a generic model's idea of a good cut. For an editor working with client material under NDA, embargoed launches, and subjects who told their story once and trusted you with it, that trade never made sense.
So the tool got built the other way around. Everything — transcription, speaker ID, story analysis, chat — runs on the editor's own Mac. It works with the network cable unplugged. It learns the editor's voice from the editor's own finished work, not from a scrape of everyone else's. And it's sold the way tools used to be sold: once.
Who makes it
Chris Cardoza has spent 15 years cutting documentaries and branded content — athlete features, artist profiles, institutional films — for clients like Reebok, TB12 Sports, Yo-Yo Ma, and ICA Boston through his studio, Doza Visuals. Doza Assist is the tool he uses on his own projects; every feature shipped because a real edit needed it. Support email goes to the person who wrote the code.
The full local engine is MIT-licensed and public on GitHub — clone it, audit it, build it from source. When a tool's whole promise is "your footage never leaves your machine," you shouldn't have to take that on faith. Doza Assist itself is that engine as a signed, auto-updating Mac app with the professional features on top, and it's how the project stays funded.
Editors using Doza Assist compare workflows, share My Style profiles, and get help directly from the developer on the Doza Assist Discord. Feature requests and bug reports land there first.
What we believe about editing tools
- Footage is confidential by default. Sources, clients, and subjects didn't consent to a vendor's cloud. Local processing isn't a feature; it's the baseline.
- Editors should own their tools. $199 once, first year of updates included, optional $49/yr after that — and the app works forever either way. No meter, no seat rent.
- AI assists, the editor decides. Doza makes the first pass — selects, structure, soundbites — and tunes it to your taste. The cut is yours.
- Trust is auditable. Open-source core, offline operation you can verify by turning WiFi off.
Company details
Doza Visuals LLC
North Easton, Massachusetts, United States
[email protected]
Doza Assist is sold through Paddle (merchant of record) with a 30-day money-back guarantee, and is also available via FxFactory.
Try Doza Assist with a 30-day money-back guarantee — or build the open-source core from source and kick the tires first.
Free trial: every feature on your first 2 minutes — no account, no card · 30-day money-back guarantee · Requires a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later)