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

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

#1

Post by Dramatize »

It's a macOS menu bar app that reads the text of your focused window every few seconds through the Accessibility API. No screenshots, no video, or OCR. It writes plain markdown, one file per day, into a folder you choose.

Point Claude Code (or anything with file access) at the folder and ask "what did I work on Tuesday?" or have it build memory about your projects. The folder contains an AGENTS.md explaining the format to the model.

Thought it might be useful for someone so chucked it up on GitHub

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

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

#3

Post by etchalon »

I experimented with this exact same approach earlier this year.

It's barely sufficient, because, bluntly, most apps just aren't wired up right.

So you end up having to hand code a lot of specific profiles for specific apps to make this work well, and even then, you don't quite get the right level of detail to make it work out.

Will try this app, to see if it improved on my own approach, but man, the hope levels are low.

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

#4

Post by Dramatize »

etchalon wrote: post #3

I experimented with this exact same approach earlier this year. It's barely sufficient, because, bluntly, most apps just aren't wired up right. So you end up having to hand code a lot of specific profiles for specific apps to make this work well, and even then, you don't quite get the right level of detail to make it work out. Will try this app, to see if it improved on my own approach, but man, the hope levels are l…

Yeah don't get your hope up too much. I need to push through more cleaning up of what's captured. Let me know how it goes, keen for some feedback

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

#6

Post by hetsaraiya »

Dramatize wrote: post #5
purplecats wrote: post #2

neat. why not screenshot and tesseract (videos/images/viewport/etc)

Because you then have the macOS orange screen sharing warning/icon. I don't really want to record my screen, just the text is enough.

Agree

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

#8

Post by hetsaraiya »

etchalon wrote: post #3

I experimented with this exact same approach earlier this year. It's barely sufficient, because, bluntly, most apps just aren't wired up right. So you end up having to hand code a lot of specific profiles for specific apps to make this work well, and even then, you don't quite get the right level of detail to make it work out. Will try this app, to see if it improved on my own approach, but man, the hope levels are l…

I haven't read about how the Codex Appshots work yet, but this can be used to extract text properly. I guess. How does this idea look to you?

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

#10

Post by zahlman »

etchalon wrote: post #3

I experimented with this exact same approach earlier this year. It's barely sufficient, because, bluntly, most apps just aren't wired up right. So you end up having to hand code a lot of specific profiles for specific apps to make this work well, and even then, you don't quite get the right level of detail to make it work out. Will try this app, to see if it improved on my own approach, but man, the hope levels are l…

One of the reasons people like TUIs is because the text is always just right there.
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