Impact Capture
Capture the work that never makes it into a commit. · Website
The coffee chat that unblocked a team. The review comment that changed a design. The risk you called early. For senior engineers this is a big part of the job, it leaves no trace in Jira or GitHub, and it's gone from memory by review season.
Impact Capture is a small macOS menu bar app that catches it in the moment:
- Check-ins at natural breaks. When you come back to your Mac after time away, and once at the end of the day. Never mid-flow, capped per day, and it backs off if you keep skipping.
- Talk or type in seconds. Answer with Yes / No, a sentence, or your voice (transcribed on your Mac).
- Log from anywhere. A global shortcut (default
⌃⌥L, or ⌃⌥⌘L to talk) opens a quick-log box on every screen.
- Plain Markdown you own. One file per day, in a folder you pick. Export any period as a review-ready summary, or point your AI tool of choice at the folder.
Install
With Homebrew:
brew install --cask frugoman/tap/impact-capture
Or download the latest zip from Releases, unzip it, move it to Applications and open it. Setup takes a minute: pick a folder, choose how often it may check in, and set your shortcuts.
Requires macOS 15 or later.
Using it
Click the menu bar icon to open the popover:
- log something (type, or tap the mic) and tag it with a category;
- see today's and this week's captures, and edit or delete them;
- Check in to get a question now, Export a period, or pause check-ins.
Everything else lives in Settings: folder, speech language, check-in schedule, categories, questions, shortcuts, and integrations.
The file format
# Impact captures — 2026-09-17 (Thursday)
### 10:42 · prompt · away-return · voice · #collaboration
> Q: You were away 25 min. Did you talk to anyone about work?
Coffee with Marco from Payments. We agreed to split the migration into two PRs.
Entry header: time · source · [trigger] · voice|typed · [#category].
- source is
prompt, shortcut, menu or raycast.
- trigger is
away-return, end-of-day or manual.
- The
> Q: line is only there when the note answered a check-in.
Using it with AI tools
Settings › Integrations has a ready-made prompt that explains the format and asks for performance evidence. Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, Codex or anything else along with your captures folder.
URL scheme
| URL | Does |
|---|
impactcapture://log?text=…&category=unblocking | Save a note silently |
impactcapture://compose?category=… | Open the quick-log box |
impactcapture://voice?category=… | Open it already listening |
impactcapture://ask | Ask a check-in question now |
The raycast/ folder has Raycast script commands built on these URLs. Add the folder in Raycast › Settings › Extensions › Script Commands.
Privacy
Nothing leaves your Mac. There is no server, no analytics and no account. Speech recognition runs on-device, and the microphone is only on while the capture box shows it's listening.
Development
Needs Xcode 26 and XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen).
make install # build Release, copy to ~/Applications, launch
make test # unit tests for ImpactCaptureCore
make snapshots # render every screen (light + dark) to build/snapshots
make icon # regenerate the app icon
make release # signed + notarized DMG (see scripts/release.sh for setup)
make brew-release # release the zip + update the cask on frugoman/homebrew-tap
Sources/ImpactCaptureCore has the pure logic: file format, storage, check-in policy, questions, stats and export. It's fully unit tested.Sources/ImpactCapture is the app: the status item popover, check-in panels, setup, settings, global shortcuts and dictation.
Before building locally, set DEVELOPMENT_TEAM in project.yml to your own team.
Support
Impact Capture is free and open source. If it's useful to you, you can buy me a coffee ☕
License
MIT. See LICENSE.
