Snapctx

Your desktop context. One shortcut. Ready for AI.

Snapctx was called ContextSnap before version 1.1. The source repository and the releases repository keep their old names.

A small, local-only Windows app that captures a compact Markdown snapshot of what you are working on (open windows, Git repositories, File Explorer folders, running developer tools, Desktop items, optionally browser tabs) so you can paste it into any AI chat. It answers "what am I doing right now, and what would an assistant need to know?" without you typing it out.

Snapctx has no AI integration, network access, telemetry, or accounts. A snapshot only leaves the app when you copy it to your clipboard.

This README describes the Windows app. A Linux command-line version is described in Linux. Downloads for both are published as GitHub Releases (see docs/RELEASING.md), and the static website is in website/. A macOS menu-bar app with the same privacy model lives in macos/. CI builds and tests it, but it is not released yet because it is not notarized by Apple.

Features

• Capture → review → copy. One button (or F5 / Ctrl+Enter) collects context and shows an editable Markdown preview. Ctrl+Shift+C copies it.
• Global shortcut. Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C (configurable) works from any application while Snapctx runs in the background. It always captures and copies the complete Markdown snapshot straight to the clipboard, with no window or review step; redaction and output limits still apply.
• Copy notifications (on by default). After every copy, a small animated notice appears in the bottom-right corner: "Context copied to clipboard" with character, word, and size counts, a warning when the snapshot was truncated, or "Copy failed" with the reason. See Copy notifications.
• Runs silently in the background (on by default). At sign-in Snapctx starts with no window, taskbar button, notification-area icon, console, or startup notification. It just waits for its configurable shortcut (default Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C). Opening Snapctx again shows its window; closing the window returns it to the background. Only one copy ever runs. See Background operation.
• Visible screen text (on by default, focused window only). The text you can currently see in the window you are working in, such as a ChatGPT or Claude conversation, a document, or a dialog, read through Windows UI Automation with an on-device Windows OCR fallback. See Visible screen text.
• Collectors (each can be turned on or off):

  Collector	What it records	Default
  Open windows	Titles and process names of Alt+Tab-style windows, most recent first; marks the foreground window	On
  Git repositories	Branch, upstream ahead/behind, staged/unstaged/untracked counts, changed file names, last 3 commits	On
  File Explorer folders	Paths of open Explorer windows and tabs	On
  Developer tools	IDEs, terminals, runtimes from an editable list, with PIDs and executable paths	On
  Desktop items	Names and sizes of non-hidden Desktop entries, newest first	On
  System summary	Windows version, architecture, CPU count, memory	On
  Browser tabs	Tab titles from Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox, Arc, Thorium; optionally the active tab's address. Browsers listed under excluded programs are never read	Off

• Privacy controls: secret and email redaction, user-identity hiding, URL query stripping, excluded programs / title keywords / folders, custom redaction words, item and output limits.
• Clear status: each collector reports a count, "none", "off", "unavailable", or "failed" (hover a chip in the status bar for details). One failing collector never blocks the rest.
• Command line: Snapctx --capture (capture + copy + summary) and Snapctx --print (Markdown to stdout).

Install on Windows

Download Snapctx-Setup.exe from the releases (from version 1.1; 1.0.x was a ZIP) and run it:

1. The installer is per-user (no administrator rights) and includes the .NET runtime, so nothing else needs installing. It installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Snapctx and adds a Start Menu shortcut (a desktop shortcut is optional).
2. It asks whether Snapctx starts in the background when you sign in (on by default; change it later in Settings or with Snapctx.exe --disable-startup).
3. When setup finishes, Snapctx starts. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C in any app, then paste.

The installer is not code-signed, so SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" (choose More info → Run anyway). Packaging as an installer does not change that.

Upgrading from Snapctx or from the ContextSnap ZIP: run the new installer. It asks a running copy to quit first, then the app replaces the old ContextSnap.lnk startup shortcut with Snapctx.lnk and keeps reading your settings from %APPDATA%\ContextSnap until it next saves them to %APPDATA%\Snapctx. You can delete the old ZIP folder afterwards.

Uninstalling (Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Snapctx): stops Snapctx and removes the program, its shortcuts, and its startup shortcut. Settings (%APPDATA%\Snapctx) and the diagnostics log (%LOCALAPPDATA%\Snapctx) are kept; delete them if you want.

The installer is built with Inno Setup from installer/Snapctx.iss:

dotnet publish src/ContextSnap -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained -o publish/installer-app
& "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Inno Setup 6\ISCC.exe" /DAppVersion=1.1.0 installer\Snapctx.iss   # writes publish\Snapctx-Setup.exe

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