A macOS menu bar app that retains a written file of what you’re employed on, for
your personal LLM to learn.
Whereas the attention in your menu bar is open, Ambient Context reads the textual content of
whichever window you’ve targeted (by way of the macOS accessibility tree, each
few seconds) and appends it to a plain markdown file: one file per day, in
a folder you select. Level Claude Code or another agent at that folder
and it might probably reply “what did I work on Tuesday?”, construct reminiscence about your
initiatives, or write your standup for you.
No screenshots, no video. It reads textual content by means of the accessibility
API, nothing else.
Nothing leaves your machine. No account, no server, no telemetry, no
bundled mannequin. This construct makes no community calls in any respect; the signed
launch will add a single replace test towards GitHub.
Recordsdata you personal. Plain markdown in a folder you selected. Transfer them,
grep them, delete them.
Redaction earlier than writing. Password managers and personal shopping
home windows are by no means captured. Password fields are skipped on the supply,
and credentials, API keys and card-shaped numbers are scrubbed earlier than
something touches disk.
Constructed to be learn by an LLM. Strains are deduplicated throughout the day,
interface junk is filtered out, and every block data the doc path
or URL it was taking a look at so your agent can open the actual factor as an alternative
of trusting fragments. The folder carries an AGENTS.md explaining the
format to no matter reads it.
Requires macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon.
Early and unsigned. There isn’t a notarised obtain but (Apple Developer
enrolment is in progress), so for now you construct it your self, which takes
about two minutes:
You want Node, Rust and Xcode
Command Line Instruments.
cd ambient-context
npm set up
npm run tauri construct
The app lands in src-tauri/goal/launch/bundle/macos/. Drag
Ambient Context.app to Purposes and open it.
For growth, npm run tauri dev runs it with scorching reload.
The settings window opens by itself. Grant Accessibility when requested:
that is the permission that lets the app learn window textual content, and nothing
works with out it.
Select the place to save lots of. The default is ~/Ambient Context, intentionally
exterior ~/Paperwork so iCloud doesn’t sync your file off the
machine.
That is it. Recording begins as soon as setup is full and begins with the
app from then on. Click on the attention within the menu bar to cease; stopping is
remembered till you begin once more.
Open eye: recording. Closed eye: not. Proper-click the icon for in the present day’s
file, the folder and settings.
What a day file seems like
date: 2026-08-25
captured_by: Ambient Context 0.1.0
—
## 09:41–10:05 · Chrome · Tauri tray documentation
url: https://v2.tauri.app/be taught/system-tray/
Block headings are the day’s timeline. Physique strains are written as soon as per day
regardless of how typically they’re seen, so the file stays sufficiently small handy
to an LLM complete. AGENTS.md within the seize folder paperwork the format
and the best way to learn it nicely.
Chromium and Electron apps (Chrome, Slack, VS Code, Obsidian, Figma…)
solely construct their accessibility tree when requested, so the primary seconds of
seize in these apps are skinny and fill in on later passes. Chrome could
present a barely glitchy window-resize animation whereas enabled; that may be a
identified price of the mechanism.
GPU-rendered terminals (Kitty, Alacritty) expose little or no textual content.
Terminal.app and iTerm2 work.
Seize your findings: which apps come again wealthy, partial or empty is
precisely the suggestions that helps (docs/census.md has the template).
Privateness mannequin, in a single paragraph
The app reads solely the targeted window: by no means background home windows, different
shows or minimised home windows, and by no means whereas the display screen is locked. It
excludes password managers and personal shopping solely, skips safe
enter fields on the accessibility degree, and pattern-scrubs secrets and techniques earlier than
writing. The whole lot it produces is plaintext by yourself disk, and the
seize folder is excluded from seize so it can’t observe itself. If
you discover a gap in any of this, please open a difficulty.
