"Building Tools for Research" with Galen Reich

This week we spoke to Galen Reich, Tech Community Lead at Bellingcat. In the talk Galen provided invaluable advice for those who want to build a tool for research, highlighting what aspects you need to consider in the planning stages, raising awareness of what obstacles could arise once the tool is established and explaining how anyone can build an everlasting tool with or without coding knowhow.

The talk was hosted by Charlotte Maher on Thursday August 28th 2025. Music featured is courtesy of Artlist.

Recorded live in the Bellingcat Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/bellingcat

Links discussed:

Bellingcat GitHub Repository: https://github.com/orgs/bellingcat/repositories

1xBet investigations: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/10/21/1xbet-hosts-thousands-of-amateur-sports-streams-on-its-website/

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/11/19/volunteers-find-1xbet-stream-sites/

Upcoming Bellingcat training on the Command Line: https://www.bellingcat.com/workshops/september-30-2025-command-line-tools-for-open-source-researchers-for-absolute-beginners-americas-europe-friendly-time

Bellingcat Tech Series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq6cQ--4f90icDJUwiGcPrFFLLguuZ0ht

Bellingcat Toolkit: https://bellingcat.gitbook.io/toolkit

Tech Contributors in Discord: https://discord.com/channels/709752884257882135/1173619361882329149

Tools and sites in Discord: https://discord.com/channels/709752884257882135/709755421836967978

Tool Support in Discord: https://discord.com/channels/709752884257882135/947175222937800754

Search Grid Tool: https://grid.bellingcat.com/

Council Transcript Search Tool: https://council-search.bellingcat.com/

and GitHub link for the code for that tool: https://github.com/bellingcat/CouncilSearcher

Filmot (YT Transcripts): https://filmot.com/