You're absolutely right that you can script this if you have the know-how. I used AHK for years before building this.

But the main goal here is to offer that power to people who don't have the time or desire to learn scripting syntax, set up environments or debug code. They just want a tool that works out of the box. And even for technical folks, maintaining a script that parses complex HTML/RTF without breaking on nested tags (which often happens with Regex) is a headache I wanted to solve permanently.

Regarding privacy, that was actually my top priority when designing the architecture. I'm fully aware of how sensitive clipboard data is, which is why I built it to run 100% locally. You can literally block the app in your firewall or physically disconnect your internet and it works perfectly, I even built an offline license activation method specifically for high-security environments.

As a point of validation, I would use this even though I have know about AHK for years. I don’t have any interest in developing an AHK hobby and I value the specific single feature “strip non-bold/italic/underline/hyperlink formatting”. Thanks for making it :)

You'll do better showing this to the people who would be your users. Looks like a solid idea to make some money on the side solving a problem you actually have.

A lot of people on HN wouldn't be your users. That's fine. Find them and post this there.