PwrSnap

Capture stays on your laptop until you opt in. Enable AI and your captures ride your existing OpenAI Codex install — no new cloud provider, no new account.

A macOS-first capture + library app with global hotkeys for region, window, and full-screen snaps. A float-over toast that copies a Low / Med / High render to the clipboard in one click. A menu-bar tray that surfaces the last capture for instant re-copy or edit. And — because the AI brain is the Codex CLI / Codex Desktop you already have installed — annotation, smart filenames, descriptions, and sensitive-data review go through your existing OpenAI Codex plan, billed to the AI cloud provider you've already set Codex up with. No new cloud provider for PwrSnap to talk to, no new account to manage, no telemetry.

 

Why you might want it

• Capture is instant, and it's where your fingers already are. ⌘⇧C for quick capture (snap to a window, drag a region, or hit ⇧ at commit time for occlusion-free full-window). Dedicated chords for region-only and window-only modes. Every binding is editable from Settings → Hotkeys and rebinds without a restart.
• The library knows where the snap came from. Captures auto-group by source app (Chrome, Slack, Xcode, Figma…) with first-class buckets in the sidebar. Filter by app. Virtualized grid stays smooth at thousands of rows. Drag a capture straight out to Finder, Messages, or any drop target.
• One-click copy at the resolution you actually want. Right after every capture, the float-over toast pops up with Low, Med, and High preset copies. The renderer caches the bytes per preset, so the second paste — including from a global copy hotkey while the toast is up — is instant.
• Menu-bar surface for the last snap. The tray popover always shows the most recent capture with an Edit button and quick re-copy. One click away from anywhere on the OS, no Library window needed.
• AI rides the Codex you already have, on your existing plan. PwrSnap is a Codex App Server client — it talks stdio JSON-RPC to your local Codex CLI / Codex Desktop install for annotation, description generation, smart filenames, sensitive-data scan, and (Phase 5+) voice describe. The image-bearing turns then hit whichever AI cloud provider Codex is set to talk to (OpenAI by default — Codex itself is an OpenAI product — but Codex can be configured to route elsewhere), billed to the plan you already have with that provider through Codex. PwrSnap itself opens no new account, holds no API key of its own, and never calls a model provider directly. Settings → AI Providers auto-discovers every Codex binary on the system and lets you pin a specific path.
• Local-first and quiet. Captures land under ~/Library/Application Support/PwrSnap/ as SQLite (WAL) plus a content-addressed source store. Secrets are encrypted at rest via Electron safeStorage (macOS Keychain backend); the renderer only ever sees a { configured, lastSetAt } shape — plaintext never crosses the IPC boundary. No telemetry. No PwrSnap-owned account, no PwrSnap-owned cloud sync. (AI features, when enabled, do ride your existing OpenAI Codex plan — see the AI bullet above.)

The longer-form pitch is at pwrsnap.com; operator setup + feature reference at docs.pwrsnap.com.

Get it

Just want to use it

1. Download PwrSnap.dmg. Universal binary — runs natively on Apple Silicon (M1+) and Intel Macs. Once release infrastructure goes live the binary will be Developer ID-signed and Apple-notarized, so first launch is a single Gatekeeper prompt (no right-click-open dance).
2. Install by opening the DMG and dragging PwrSnap into Applications.
3. (Optional) Wire up Codex from Settings → AI Providers to light up annotation, smart filenames, and descriptions. If you don't have a Codex install, capture and library still work; the AI surfaces are just hidden.

Windows preview install, FFmpeg, and build notes live in docs/windows/README.md.

Updates flow through electron-updater against the GitHub release feed. Switch between stable and prerelease channels in Settings → Experimental → Update channel. The Help menu's Check for Updates runs an on-demand check; when a new version finishes downloading, an inline banner in the Library window offers a one-click restart.

Want to hack on it

git clone https://github.com/pwrdrvr/PwrSnap.git
cd PwrSnap
pnpm install
pnpm dev

PwrSnap is a pnpm workspace (apps/desktop + packages/*). The Codex App Server protocol types are consumed from @pwrdrvr/codex-app-server-protocol, pinned in apps/desktop/package.json; publish that package from its own repo before bumping PwrSnap to a newer Codex protocol surface. Full dev workflow, conventions, and the active buildout plan live in AGENTS.md and docs/plans/.

How it's built

Layer	Stack	Where it lives
Desktop shell	Electron + TypeScript + React 19 + electron-vite	apps/desktop/
Capture pipeline	screencapture(1) + native Swift window-list helper	apps/desktop/src/main/capture/
Render pipeline	sharp for resize + crop + thumbnail caching	apps/desktop/src/main/render/
Persistence	better-sqlite3 (WAL) + content-addressed source store	apps/desktop/src/main/persistence/
Codex App Server	Published protocol contracts, stdio JSON-RPC client	@pwrdrvr/codex-app-server-protocol + apps/desktop/src/main/ai/
Shared types	Cross-process commands + IPC channels + result envelopes	packages/shared/
Settings + secrets	Single substrate (JSON + Electron safeStorage)	apps/desktop/src/main/settings/

A few load-bearing design rules:

• Single command bus. Every IPC verb routes through apps/desktop/src/main/command-bus.ts — ipcMain today, HTTP RPC and MCP later. Exactly one place to register a command; exactly one place to enforce auth + capability checks.
• Renderers stay sandboxed. Every BrowserWindow is contextIsolation: true, sandbox: true, nodeIntegration: false.
• Result-pattern for cross-process errors. Electron invoke strips instanceof. All handlers return Result<Res, PwrSnapError> — { ok: false, error: { kind, code, message, cause? } }.

Roadmap

macOS-first today. Windows preview work is in progress under Phase 8 of the buildout plan; see docs/windows/README.md for local installer and build instructions. Linux remains deferred.

What's shipped vs. what's still in flight — including video capture, the sizzle-reel composer, and presenter video — will land at docs.pwrsnap.com once the docs site goes live.

The desktop release pipeline (universal DMG, signing, notarization, auto-update, stable PwrSnap.dmg URL) is documented in docs/desktop-release-runbook.md.

Going deeper

Doc	What it covers
pwrsnap.com	Marketing landing — the WHY in 60 seconds.
docs.pwrsnap.com	Operator reference — capture modes, hotkeys, settings, AI configuration.
AGENTS.md	Project conventions, brand rules, "how the load-bearing pieces fit together." Read first.
docs/desktop-release-runbook.md	One-time setup, CI release path, local fallback, universal DMG verification.
docs/plans/2026-05-03-001-feat-pwrsnap-feature-buildout-plan.md	Active feature buildout plan — phase order, scope, decisions.
docs/solutions/	Post-incident notes + gotchas — read before re-solving an old problem.

License

PwrSnap is licensed under the MIT License. Third-party dependency notices are aggregated in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES and shipped with desktop distributions.

Created by PwrDrvr LLC. Copyright © 2026 PwrDrvr LLC.