Momentum

Momentum is a local-first Windows desktop app for capturing notes, tasks, and goals from one simple writing box.

The current direction is the Momentum Capture experience: type a sentence, press Enter, and the app routes it into the right place using deterministic rules plus a small local intent model. It is designed to feel closer to a smart notebook than a heavy project management tool.

There is no account system, cloud sync, telemetry, or runtime network dependency. App data stays on the machine in SQLite and local Markdown files.

Screenshots

Features

• One-line capture for notes, tasks, and goals.
• Local three-class routing: task, goal, and note.
• Explicit prefixes such as task:, goal:, and note: always win.
• Deterministic date and time parsing for scheduled tasks.
• Daily notebook with autosave, pinning, search, and tags.
• Sidebar library for previous notes, tasks, goals, projects, reports, and trash.
• Safe delete flow with restore support from Trash.
• Light and dark themes.
• Local summaries for 7 days, 1 month, 1 year, or custom date ranges.
• Recurring goals, daily tasks, reflection, insights, and consistency maps from the original Focus Tracker workflow.
• Local SQLite database stored as momentum.sqlite3.
• Dated Markdown capture exports under momentum_captures/YYYY/MM-Month/DD/.
• Real usage correction capture so routing mistakes can improve future training.

Tech Stack

• Python
• PySide6
• SQLite
• PyTorch and tokenizers for optional local model inference
• Custom Qt widgets and QSS themes
• PyInstaller build scripts for local executable builds

Project Structure

momentum/
  core/       domain models, date helpers, analytics
  data/       SQLite schema, repository, paths, legacy migration
  capture/    parser, router, memory, local model wrapper, summaries
  state/      Qt signal-based application store
  ui/         main window, sidebar, views, widgets, theme

experiments/
  three_class/        production three-class model scripts
  distillation/       teacher-student experiments
  distillation_v2/    BPE distilled student experiments
  modernbert/         ModernBERT teacher experiment

training/             dataset export, training, and prediction scripts

focus_tracker.py      source launcher
FocusTracker.pyw      windowed launcher
momentum_capture.py   Momentum Capture launcher
MomentumCapture.pyw   windowed Momentum Capture launcher
Build_Exe.bat         Windows executable builder
Build_Capture_Exe.bat Momentum Capture executable builder

Run From Source

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python momentum_capture.py

On Windows, the windowed launcher is:

python MomentumCapture.pyw

The original Focus Tracker window is still available:

python focus_tracker.py

Build A Local Exe

.\Build_Capture_Exe.bat

For the original Focus Tracker executable:

.\Build_Exe.bat

Generated executables and build folders are local artifacts and are not required for source development.

Capture Examples

goal: exercise daily
tomorrow 09:30 finish portfolio review
note: felt focused after the morning session
roadmap for improving the job search
linkedin every day
capgemini interview felt rough

Momentum uses the app context to route each entry:

• a dated action becomes a task
• a recurring habit becomes a goal
• observations, reflections, ideas, and plans become notes

Local AI Architecture

Momentum does not need a cloud LLM for routing. The production architecture is layered:

1. Explicit prefix rules
2. Date and time parser
3. Local memory and correction lookup
4. Three-class local encoder model
5. Tiny fallback classifier
6. Confidence-based save or review

The app currently uses three destinations: task, goal, and note. The earlier plan class was removed because it overlapped too much with notes in real usage.

Training and architecture details are documented in AI_ARCHITECTURE.md.

Training Workflow

Model checkpoints and datasets are intentionally not committed to GitHub. Keep them local.

Useful commands:

py -3.11 training\export_real_usage_dataset.py --output training_data\real_usage\momentum_real_usage.jsonl
py -3.11 experiments\three_class\build_real_usage_cache.py --usage training_data\real_usage\momentum_real_usage.jsonl --output experiments\three_class\cache\three_class_with_real_usage.jsonl
py -3.11 experiments\three_class\train_three_class.py --cache experiments\three_class\cache\three_class_with_real_usage.jsonl --device cuda

Optional ONNX export:

py -3.11 experiments\three_class\export_onnx.py --checkpoint-dir experiments\three_class\latest --output experiments\three_class\latest\model.onnx --opset 18

Backup, Export, And Support

Open the Reports tab in Momentum Capture to run local support actions:

• Create Backup
• Export Database
• Support Bundle
• Open Data Folder

These write to ignored local folders: backups/, exports/, and logs/.

Package For Windows

Create a local release zip with the executable, install/uninstall scripts, docs, and SHA-256 checksum:

.\scripts\package_windows_release.ps1

To package the existing MomentumCapture.exe without rebuilding:

.\scripts\package_windows_release.ps1 -SkipBuild

Data And Privacy

Momentum stores app data locally. These files are ignored by Git:

• momentum.sqlite3*
• daily_focus.json
• focus_tracker_data.json
• momentum_captures/
• models/
• training_data/
• model exports such as *.pt, *.onnx, *.safetensors, and *.bin
• build/
• dist/
• __pycache__/

If daily_focus.json exists and momentum.sqlite3 has no goals yet, Momentum imports the legacy daily goals, checks, tasks, task checks, notes, and mood values on first run.

Development Notes

Use requirements.txt for runtime dependencies.

• Momentum Capture entry point: momentum.capture_main:main
• Original Focus Tracker entry point: momentum.main:main
• Training documentation: training/README.md
• AI architecture notes: AI_ARCHITECTURE.md
• Release-readiness gaps and next steps: RELEASE_READINESS.md

Run the current test suite with:

python -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Install the local Git hook at .git/hooks/post-commit that pushes after every successful commit:

.\scripts\install_git_hooks.ps1

To skip auto-push for one commit:

$env:MOMENTUM_AUTO_PUSH = "0"
git commit -m "local work in progress"
Remove-Item Env:\MOMENTUM_AUTO_PUSH