Scribe

Warning

This project is completely vibe coded. Use at your own risk.

A lightweight, silent background service that captures full-screen screenshots every 5 seconds.

Features

• Silent - No sounds, no notifications, no visual indicators
• Lightweight - Compiled Swift binary (~200KB), uses native macOS tools
• Storage efficient - WebP format (~30-50KB per screenshot)
• Low resource usage - Runs with low I/O and CPU priority
• Starts on boot - Automatically runs when you log in

Installation

Prerequisites

You need swift installed (part of Xcode Command Line Tools) and ffmpeg.

xcode-select --install
brew install ffmpeg

Install

./install.sh

This will:

1. Compile the tool from source
2. Install it to ~/.local/bin
3. Set up the launch agent for background execution

Grant Screen Recording Permission (Required)

1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording
2. Click the + button
3. Navigate to ~/.local/bin/scribe (cmd+shift+g to paste path) and add it
4. Restart the service:

   launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/com.scribe.service

Uninstall

./uninstall.sh

Check Status

# See if it's running
launchctl list | grep scribe

# Manually stop
launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.scribe.service.plist

# Manually start
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.scribe.service.plist

# Restart
launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/com.scribe.service

Storage Estimate

With aggressive optimization (1280px width, Q50 WebP):

• ~30-50 KB per screenshot
• ~20-30 MB/hour (720 screenshots)
• ~600-700 MB/day

This is nearly 10x smaller than the original high-quality settings.