Host Stephen Colbert and the writing staff were often frustrated by the program, as it did not allow for work to be made by several people, on a document, at the same time.
The need for a new software became evident after a mishap on the show, where a script originally featured a joke involving a real life goat, a significant production expense.
[3] In 2011, Aside from his writing duties, Dubbin started the process of creating an alternative inspired by Etherpad, and he and Colbert split the costs to hire a team of outside programmers.
[3][1][4] Following a friend's advice, Dubbin posted a banner ad on Reddit saying The Colbert Report was looking for programmers, among the people who responded were Paul Ford and Aaron Swartz.
[1][4] A rough version of the software was introduced slowly and used on the show, "Once every couple weeks, we fixed the thing that went horribly wrong", Dubbin said.
[1] Scripto's first employee was programmer and media critic, Rusty Foster, who joined the staff at the suggestion of Ford, in January 2014.
[3] An ad for the company ran during the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, which Colbert hosted, and the software itself was used to write the script for the ceremony.
[1] In 2019, the company hired Alice DuBois to supervise the development of Showrunner, overseeing product and project management, among other things.
[12][7][13] Kline said that the company was now licensing Scripto to video game and podcast studios, as well as award shows such as the Clios and websites like The Bleacher Report.
[12] The company is also studying adapting the service for live events, such as theater, and content creation,[13] as well as how to incorporate integration systems and AI into the platform.