You ask an AI something. While it's generating, three more thoughts arrive — a follow-up question, a line worth keeping, an idea for later. Acting on any of them means interrupting what's running, so you hold them in your head, and by the time the answer lands two are gone.
Sill is where they go instead. Copy something and tap Shift twice; it lands in a panel at
the edge of your screen without your cursor ever leaving the conversation. Type a prompt
straight into the panel while the AI is still talking. When you're ready, select what you
want, press ⇧⌘C, and paste — they're copied as a numbered list and ticked off in the same
motion.
That last part is the point. Every tool in this category becomes a graveyard, because nothing in them makes finished things go away. Sill is built to empty: ticking something off removes it from the panel, and clearing moves it to an archive you can still read and restore from.
Everything lives in plain markdown files you own. No database, no account, no sync, and no network code anywhere in the app.
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Universal — Apple silicon and Intel.
There is no download yet. A notarized
.zipis coming shortly. Until then, build it — it takes about fifteen seconds and needs nothing but Xcode's command line tools.
Two upsides over a download, both real: locally compiled apps are never quarantined by macOS, so there is no Gatekeeper warning at all, and you can read every line of what you're running.
git clone https://github.com/dawoodabdullah010/sill.git
cd sill
./build.sh
cp -R build/Sill.app /Applications/
open /Applications/Sill.appYou need Xcode or the Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install). Nothing else — there are
no dependencies, so swift build fetches nothing.
If you plan to rebuild often and use Accessibility, run this once first:
./tools/fix-signing.shmacOS ties the Accessibility permission to a code-signing identity. An ad-hoc signature's
identity is a hash of the binary, so it changes with every build and the grant silently dies —
the System Settings toggle keeps looking on while the app keeps asking. The script makes a
free self-signed certificate so the identity stays stable. Then build with
SILL_SIGN_IDENTITY="Sill Dev" ./build.sh.
Not available yet. A build signed and notarized by Apple — which opens with no warning and, more importantly, keeps its Accessibility permission across updates — will appear under Releases soon. Watch the repo if you'd rather wait for it than compile.
Sill runs in the menu bar with no Dock icon. The panel docks to the right edge of whichever screen your pointer is on; drag it anywhere and it remembers.
The panel is a nonactivating panel — a window that floats above your work and accepts typing without making Sill the frontmost app. Your caret stays in the chat you were in. That single AppKit behaviour is why Sill is native Swift and not an Electron app.
Two kinds of item, distinguished by where they came from:
- A note is something you captured from somewhere else.
- A prompt is something you typed into the panel yourself.
Type # Reading into the composer to start a new list.
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
⇧ ⇧ |
Capture the selection (or whatever you last copied) |
⇧⌘C |
Copy the selection as a numbered list and tick it off |
⌘C |
Copy without ticking off |
⌘↩ |
Send back into the app you came from |
Space |
Mark done |
↩ |
Edit the selected item |
→ ← |
Expand / collapse a long item |
↑ ↓ |
Move through the list |
⌘-click / ⇧-click |
Add to the selection / select a range |
⌫ |
Delete (asks first for more than one) |
⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z |
Undo / redo |
⌘F |
Search · ⌘K one list at a time · ⌘/ all shortcuts |
Esc |
Clear selection, then close |
# Name ↩ |
Start a new list |
Right-click any item for Copy, Copy as List, Mark as Done, Expand, Edit, Merge Notes, Send to App, Back to source, Move to, and Delete. Drag items to reorder.
Your captures live in ~/Library/Application Support/Sill/Sill.md, and you can point Sill at
any folder you like — an Obsidian vault, a git repo — from ··· → Choose Notes Folder…
# Inbox
<!-- sill: c=2026-08-01T14:55:54Z | app=Claude | bundle=com.anthropic.claudefordesktop -->
- [ ] The bit of the answer that was actually worth keeping.
Continuation lines are indented two spaces.
* [ ] Ask it to redo this with the constraint relaxed
<!-- sill: c=2026-07-30T09:02:11Z | app=Safari | url=https://example.com/post -->
- [ ] https://example.com/post# Nameis a list.- [ ]is a note — something you captured.* [ ]is a prompt — something you typed.[x]means done.- Two-space indented lines continue the item above.
<!-- sill: … -->carries metadata:c=captured,d=completed, andapp=/bundle=/url=for where it came from.
- and * are interchangeable bullets in markdown, so both render as ordinary checkboxes in
Obsidian and on GitHub — the note/prompt distinction rides on a character your editor already
ignores. Nothing is embedded in your text.
Anything you write in the file yourself is kept. Paragraphs, sub-headings, quotes — Sill carries them through and writes them back where they were. It also watches the folder, so editing the file in another app while Sill is running no longer loses your changes.
Cleared items move to Sill-Archive.md. They're never destroyed, and ··· → Archive lets
you read and restore them.
Sill writes to a temporary sibling and swaps it into place, so a crash mid-write can't truncate your file. If the file ever becomes unreadable, Sill stops saving entirely rather than overwriting it with an empty list.
Sill contains no networking code. Not "we don't collect data" — there is no code in this repository capable of making a network request. Check it yourself:
grep -rniE 'URLSession|NSURLConnection|CFNetwork|NWConnection|socket|http' Sources/The only URLs are file:// paths to your notes, the x-apple.systempreferences: link that
opens System Settings, and URLs you captured — opened in your browser only when you click
them. There are no dependencies, so there's no third-party code to audit either.
Sill works on first launch with nothing granted.
- Without any permission — press
⌘Cyourself, then tap Shift twice. Sill reads the clipboard. - With Accessibility (optional) — Sill presses
⌘Cfor you, so Shift-Shift grabs the selection directly; it reads the URL of the page you captured from, so "Back to source" returns you to the exact conversation; and⌘↩pastes back into the app you came from.
Accessibility is the broadest permission macOS grants, and you should be sceptical of any app
asking for it. Sill uses it for exactly three things — reading the current selection,
synthesising ⌘C/⌘V, and reading a browser's address bar — all in
Capture.swift. It asks at most once per launch, never on first
run, and never blocks a capture on your answer.
Sill does not use Input Monitoring. Detecting a double-tap of Shift needs only modifier-key events, which macOS delivers without permission — so Sill cannot read what you type, with or without Accessibility.
swift build # debug
./build.sh # universal release .app
swiftc -o /tmp/t tools/roundtrip-test.swift Sources/Sill/Model.swift # store tests| Path | What's in it |
|---|---|
Sources/Sill/Model.swift |
The markdown format — parser and serializer |
Sources/Sill/Store.swift |
Items, lists, archive, undo, atomic writes, file watching |
Sources/Sill/Capture.swift |
Reading the selection, provenance, sending text back |
Sources/Sill/DoubleShift.swift |
The Shift-Shift gesture |
Sources/Sill/Panel.swift |
The nonactivating panel and its placement |
Sources/Sill/PanelView.swift |
The SwiftUI interface |
tools/roundtrip-test.swift |
Regression tests — every case is a bug that lost data |
If you change Model.swift or Store.swift, add a case to the test file. Losing a character
there means silently losing someone's notes.
- Double-tapping Shift collides with JetBrains IDEs, which bind it to Search Everywhere. Not rebindable yet — the next thing to fix.
- No rich text. Bold and italic from the source are flattened to plain text.
- Lists can't be reordered from the UI yet, though the code is there.
- Not notarized — see Install.
- macOS only. The nonactivating panel is the product, and it's an AppKit behaviour with no cross-platform equivalent.
Yes, please — see CONTRIBUTING.md. The limitations above are the roadmap.
MIT © 2026 Dawood Abdullah — see LICENSE.
Built by @mdam10x. Free, and staying free.