Dayflow Work Journal Snapshot

Fetched: 2026-06-10 Source: https://github.com/JerryZLiu/Dayflow (README, dayflow.so)

Product Positioning

Dayflow is a native macOS SwiftUI app that builds a private, automatic work journal from screen activity. It records lightweight screen chunks, analyzes them with a user-chosen AI provider, and turns the day into labeled activity cards on a visual timeline. Marketing emphasizes “stop guessing where your time went” and open-source MIT licensing.

Core Workflow

Grant Screen & System Audio Recording permission.
Dayflow captures screen activity at low FPS (README: ~1 FPS, 15-second chunks).
Every ~15 minutes, recent footage is sent to the configured AI for analysis.
The app synthesizes timeline cards with concise summaries (not just app names).
Users browse the timeline, run daily standup / weekly review views, export Markdown, and chat with the journal in natural language.

AI Provider Options

Local: Ollama or LM Studio (analysis can stay on-device).
Cloud BYO key: Gemini API.
CLI subscriptions: ChatGPT (Codex CLI) or Claude (Claude Code CLI) for frontier narrative quality.

If a cloud or CLI provider is selected, activity data needed for analysis leaves the Mac for that provider. Local model mode keeps analysis on-machine.

Privacy And Storage

Data lives under ~/Library/Application Support/Dayflow/ by default.
Open source (MIT) — users can verify handling in code.
Automatic cleanup / storage limits are configurable.
URL scheme automation: dayflow://start-recording, dayflow://stop-recording for Shortcuts, Raycast, and hotkey launchers.

Pace Relevance

Dayflow owns the ambient screen memory + work journal wedge. Pace owns voice-first real-time assistance + local tool execution. Overlap:

Capability	Dayflow	Pace today
Screen capture	Continuous low-FPS journal	On-demand + watch-mode diff events
AI analysis	Batch timeline cards every ~15 min	Per-turn VLM + planner on PTT
Chat with history	Journal Q&A over timeline	Conversation history + local RAG
Local LM Studio	Supported provider	Default planner/VLM path
macOS automation	URL scheme start/stop recording	Tool/MCP execution, no `pace://` yet
Proactive loop	Passive journal	Watch mode + future proactive pings

Pace should preserve differentiation: zero cloud by architecture (no Gemini default, no cloud embeddings), sub-second voice loop, and agent actions (click, type, Mail drafts, Calendar, MCP). Dayflow does not ship voice control or macOS action execution.

Convergence path for Pace (not parity): persist watch-mode / screen-context snapshots into retrieval, add timeline-style “what did I do today?” answers from local history, and expose pace:// deeplinks for Shortcuts parity with Dayflow and Dottie.