Respiro
Respiro is a macOS menu bar app that detects stress from your screen and guides you through micro-practices.
Core trick
Sends periodic in-memory screenshots to a vision model that decides whether to intervene, then calls a tool to pick a breathing exercise from user history.
Description
Respiro is a macOS menu bar app that detects stress from your screen and guides you through micro-practices.
It captures your screen and sends it to Opus 4.6 Vision API to read stress signals — tab overload, error dialogs, back-to-back meetings. The core challenge: knowing when NOT to help. Opus uses extended thinking to reason about whether to intervene or stay silent.
When stress peaks, Opus calls tools (practice catalog, user history) to select the best exercise — a 2-minute breathing session from the menu bar.
Opus 4.6 powers every layer:
• Vision API — multimodal stress detection
• Extended Thinking — reasoning about when to stay quiet
• Tool Use — practice selection from history
• 1M Context — end-of-day reflection
We built AI playtesting: hundreds of stress scenarios trained the engine, catching 150+ bugs. Zero dependencies, pure Swift 6, privacy-first.
README excerpt
# Respiro Desktop > **AI-powered macOS stress coach** | Built with Claude Opus 4.6 | Anthropic Hackathon Feb 2026 ## Download **[Download Respiro.dmg (v1.0.0)](https://github.com/kv100/respiro-macos/releases/latest/download/Respiro.dmg)** — macOS 14+, signed & notarized > Open DMG → drag to Applications → launch. Grant Screen Recording permission when prompted. > Works out of the box — **no API key needed.** ## The Problem Knowledge workers spend 8+ hours staring at screens, unaware of mounting stress until it's too late. Existing wellness apps require manual check-ins — by then, the damage is done. ## The Solution Respiro lives in your macOS menu bar as a weather icon. It periodically captures screenshots (memory only, never disk), sends them to **Claude Opus 4.6 Vision API** for stress analysis, and represents your inner state as weather: clear, cloudy, or stormy. **The hardest AI problem is knowing when NOT to help.** Respiro uses Opus 4.6's adaptive reasoning to decide when to stay quiet — and shows you its thinking when it does. ## How Opus 4.6 Powers Respiro ### Vision API — Multimodal Stress Detection Screenshots are analyzed by Opus 4.6 to detect visual stress cues: tab count, notification volume, app switching frequency, error messages, video call fatigue. The AI never reads message content or names. **Multi-Monitor Support:** For users with 2+ displays, Respiro captures ALL screens and creates a side-by-side montage (`[Screen1|Screen2|Screen3]`), giving