Ambient Context - Screen memory without screenshots, just text to Markdown
Ambient Context is a macOS menu bar app that automatically records your focused window's text into a daily Markdown file, creating a private, searchable memory of your work. It uses the macOS accessibility API to capture text without screenshots, ensuring nothing leaves your machine. With redaction for sensitive data and LLM-friendly formatting, it's perfect for AI agents like Claude Code to answer questions about your past work or generate standup reports. Privacy-focused, it requires no account and makes no network calls. Build it yourself in two minutes and start building your ambient memory today.
While the eye in your menu bar is open, Ambient Context reads the text of whichever window you have focused and appends it to a plain markdown file—so your LLM can answer 'what did I work on Tuesday?'
- Dramatize
One app that's using this technique (not exactly sure if it's the same) is Littlebird: https://littlebird.ai/
I also saw that HeyClicky started doing something similar but end up removing from the product.
- jwr
Hmm. What would be really helpful for me would be an enhancement of the TypeWhisper app for dictation that would be able to get the context of what I am dictating into and send it along with the prompt to an LLM.
Probably much simpler and much less of a privacy problem (I run my own local LLM for that purpose so that nothing leaves the machine).
- zahlman
> reads the text of your focused window every few seconds through the Accessibility API
> It writes plain markdown
Where are the formatting decisions coming from?