Show HN: Screen memory without screenshots, just text to Markdown

A macOS paper barroom app that keeps a written grounds of what you activity on, for your ain LLM to read.

While the oculus successful your paper barroom is open, Ambient Context sounds the matter of whichever model you person focused (via the macOS accessibility tree, every few seconds) and appends it to a plain markdown file: 1 record per day, in a files you choose. Point Claude Code aliases immoderate different supplier astatine that folder and it tin reply "what did I activity connected Tuesday?", build representation astir your projects, aliases constitute your standup for you.

• No screenshots, nary video. It sounds matter done the accessibility API, thing else.
• Nothing leaves your machine. No account, nary server, nary telemetry, no bundled model. This build makes nary web calls astatine all; the signed release will adhd a azygous update cheque against GitHub.
• Files you own. Plain markdown successful a files you chose. Move them, grep them, delete them.
• Redaction earlier writing. Password managers and backstage browsing windows are ne'er captured. Password fields are skipped astatine the source, and credentials, API keys and card-shaped numbers are scrubbed before anything touches disk.
• Built to beryllium publication by an LLM. Lines are deduplicated crossed the day, interface junk is filtered out, and each artifact records the archive path or URL it was looking astatine truthful your supplier tin unfastened the existent point instead of trusting fragments. The files carries an AGENTS.md explaining the format to immoderate sounds it.

Requires macOS 14+ connected Apple Silicon.

Early and unsigned. There is nary notarised download yet (Apple Developer enrolment is successful progress), truthful for now you build it yourself, which takes about 2 minutes:

You request Node, Rust and Xcode Command Line Tools.

The app lands successful src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/. Drag Ambient Context.app to Applications and unfastened it.

For development, npm tally tauri dev runs it pinch basking reload.

1. The settings model opens by itself. Grant Accessibility erstwhile asked: this is the support that lets the app publication model text, and nothing works without it.
2. Choose wherever to save. The default is ~/Ambient Context, deliberately outside ~/Documents truthful iCloud does not sync your grounds disconnected the machine.
3. That's it. Recording starts erstwhile setup is complete and starts pinch the app from past on. Click the oculus successful the paper barroom to stop; stopping is remembered until you commencement again.

Open eye: recording. Closed eye: not. Right-click the icon for today's file, the files and settings.

Block headings are the day's timeline. Body lines are written erstwhile per day no matter really often they are seen, truthful the record stays mini capable to hand to an LLM whole. AGENTS.md successful the seizure files documents the format and really to publication it well.

• Chromium and Electron apps (Chrome, Slack, VS Code, Obsidian, Figma...) only build their accessibility character erstwhile asked, truthful the first seconds of capture successful those apps are bladed and capable successful connected later passes. Chrome may show a somewhat glitchy window-resize animation while enabled; that is a known costs of the mechanism.
• GPU-rendered terminals (Kitty, Alacritty) expose small aliases nary text. Terminal.app and iTerm2 work.
• Capture your findings: which apps travel backmost rich, partial aliases quiet is exactly the feedback that helps (docs/census.md has the template).

The app sounds only the focused window: ne'er inheritance windows, other displays aliases minimised windows, and ne'er while the surface is locked. It excludes password managers and backstage browsing entirely, skips secure input fields astatine the accessibility level, and pattern-scrubs secrets before writing. Everything it produces is plaintext connected your ain disk, and the capture files is excluded from seizure truthful it cannot observe itself. If you find a spread successful immoderate of this, please unfastened an issue.