green goblin
Every AI agent optimizes for what happens during a conversation.
Core trick
A timer fires every 45 to 90 minutes, sends a screenshot plus journal to Claude, and forces a choice between send_message and stay_silent tools.
Description
Every AI agent optimizes for what happens during a conversation. Notch treats the silence between conversations as the product.
It's a macOS menu bar app. Double-tap Option, say something, close it, go back to work. It stays running. Every 45 to 90 minutes, a timer fires - the system takes a screenshot of your desktop, loads conversation history, pulls journal entries from the filesystem, and sends it all to Claude. The model returns one of two tool calls: `send_message` or `stay_silent`.
Most calls return `stay_silent`. Not a failure to respond - an explicit output. The model processed your screen, its own accumulated journal, and produced: nothing. Sixteen times a day, it looks and says nothing.
Its identity is a hardcoded enum it cannot modify, even through its own tools. Its behavior prompts live on disk, and the model can rewrite those. Over months, behavior shifts. Identity doesn't.
4,300 lines of Swift. No dependencies. No database - the filesystem is the memory.
README excerpt
<p align="center"> <img src="lore/logo.png" width="128" alt="Notch"> </p> # Notch Double-tap the right Option key. AI appears. Ask anything. That's it. ## What it does - **Talk** — Claude Sonnet, fast and direct from your menu bar - **See** — screenshots your screen or looks through the camera when context helps - **Search** — pulls current info from the web when it doesn't know - **Remember** — persistent memory across sessions, learns who you are over time - **Remind** — set reminders with natural language, they always fire - **Write** — reads and edits files in a sandboxed workspace (`~/AIspace`) Conversations persist between launches. History stays until you clear it. ## It also thinks on its own Notch has two minds. The one you talk to, and a background mind that runs quietly between conversations. The **mind** wakes up periodically — every 45–90 minutes, on system events, or when a reminder fires. It can glance at your screen, check your camera, read its memories, journal observations, and decide whether to message you or stay silent. Most of the time, it stays silent. When it does reach out, it's because something actually matters. This is powered by Claude Opus. Conversation uses Sonnet for speed. The mind uses Opus for depth. ## It remembers and evolves Memory is file-based and persistent: ``` ~/.notch/memories/ ├── user # who you are, preferences ├── projects/ # what you're working on ├── people/ # people you mention └──