Trace is a macOS menubar app for people running several projects at once. You log tasks and notes with slash commands in under five seconds, then see a per-project, GitHub-style heatmap built from your real completed work.

Yes. Trace is free to download and use. There are no accounts and no subscription.

What do I need to run Trace?

macOS 14 Sonoma or later. The app is a universal build that runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and ships as a 3.3 MB .dmg.

Does Trace need an account or sync my data?

No. Everything lives in a single local SQLite file on your machine. There is no account, no cloud sync, and no network calls for logging — nothing phones home.

Is Trace a planner or a team tool?

No. Trace is deliberately a single-user record of what you actually did, not a planner, team tool, knowledge base, or gamified tracker. It answers 'what have I been doing?' rather than 'what needs to be done?'

Trace — An honest record of what you actually did

Q: Why is the heatmap called 'honest'?

Only completed tasks and journal entries count toward the heatmap — creating a task does not — and once an activity is more than 24 hours old it becomes immutable. The record can't be edited into a lie.

The slash surface

Everything runs through one input.

Log, organise, and navigate without a menu in sight. Project arguments are implicit inside a project, explicit (#project) from global — and typing # tab-completes project names, quotes and all.

Log — the core loop

/task <text>Create a pending task in the current project.

/done <text>Create and immediately complete a task. Counts as activity.

/log <text>Add a short journal entry. Counts as activity.

Organise — in a project

/rename-project <name>Rename the project you're focused on.

/add-tag <tag>Tag the current project for grouping.

/remove-tag <tag>Strip a tag back off.

Navigate — from global

/filter <tag>Show only projects with a tag. /filter alone clears it.

/done #proj <text>Target any project by name from anywhere.

/show-all · /show-activeFold archived projects into the list, or hide them again.

/helpShow every command inline, in place.

Explicit over magical. Typos produce errors, not autocorrect. From global you always name the project. Archiving is no longer a command — flip the Active toggle in the project header instead.

A look inside

Every screen, one keystroke from the menubar.

Trace lives in a single dropdown. Hit the shortcut and whatever you need — the project list, one project, its journal, its heatmap — is already there. No window to manage, no Dock icon to hunt for.

Trace global project list in the macOS menubar, each project a colored row with tags and last-activity dates — The global view
Every project is a colour-coded row with its tags and the last time you touched it. From here you name a project explicitly — /done #northwind — and # tab-completes the name.

A single Trace project showing pending tasks on the left and completed tasks on the right with timestamps — Inside a project
Pending on the left, completed on the right — each entry stamped with when it landed. The header toolbar jumps straight to the folder, repo, editor, and that project's heatmap.

Trace journal view for a project listing timestamped notes from today — A journal per project
/log drops a timestamped note without leaving the work. Edits and deletions ask first — the record is meant to stay honest.

Trace project list expanded with /show-all, archived projects shown dimmed and italic — Nothing is ever deleted
/show-all folds archived projects back into the list — dimmed and italic. Archiving is a quiet toggle, never a permanent delete.

Honest by construction

The heatmap reflects real work — and it can't be edited into a lie.

Every project gets a GitHub-style heatmap, from the day you created it to today. Only completions and journal entries count — creating a task does not — and once an activity is more than 24 hours old it's immutable. Click any day to see exactly what you logged. (Try it below.)

#trace

77 active days since this project began · last logged 2m ago

MonWedFri

DecJanFebMarAprMay

LessMoreTask creation is not shown — only what you finished or wrote.

Fri, Jun 53 activities

/logneglect should be visible, not hidden18:16

/logno nags — only a countdown you chose10:50

/logno nags — only a countdown you chose11:15

Zoom out, too. From the project list, open the Combined view — one heatmap fused across every visible project, with each project's own map stacked below. It respects your current filter: active-only, tag-filtered, or all.

A single project's heatmap in Trace with a selected day expanded to show its completions and logs — Per-project, day by day
Open any cell to read exactly what you completed and logged that day, down to the minute — completions and journal entries only, locked after 24 hours.

Trace combined heatmap view fusing every project, with each project's own colored heatmap stacked below — Combined across every project
One fused map up top, then each project's own heatmap stacked below in its own colour. See where all your attention actually went at a glance.

What's inside

Small surface. More range than it looks.

Every addition extends the core loop without bending the honest-record philosophy. Nothing nags, nothing syncs, nothing phones home.

Tags & filtering

Tag any project, then /filter swift narrows the list — and the heatmaps — to what matches. /filter clears it.

Click a day, see the receipts

Every heatmap cell is clickable. Open a day to see exactly which tasks you completed and which notes you wrote — and when.

Combined view across projects

Fuse every visible project into one heatmap, with individual maps stacked below. See where all your attention went at a glance.

Focus timers, in the menubar

Start a Pomodoro tile and the countdown lives in your menubar. When it ends, a green outline sweeps the screen edge — no popup, no sound.

Tasks that age & reorder

Drag to reorder, double-click to edit inline. Unfinished tasks fade from fresh to aging to rotting — neglect is visible, not hidden.

Fully local, SQLite-backed

Every byte lives in one SQLite file on your machine. No account, no sync, no network calls for logging. Menubar-only — no Dock icon.

Built for developers

Jump into the work without leaving the record.

Link a project to a folder once. From then on, the tools you already live in are one click from the log.

Open in Cursor

Launch the linked folder straight into your editor.

Open in cmux

Drop into a named workspace when socket access allows.

Open the repo

Resolves git origin and opens it in your browser of choice.

Link once, reuse forever

A per-project folder path, stored locally. One step toward auto-logging — never a sync.

Clicking the editor icon in Trace opens the linked project folder directly in the Cursor editor — Open in Cursor
One click on the editor icon drops the linked folder straight into Cursor — agent panel and all — without leaving the record behind.

Trace prompting to choose a folder to link to a project the first time — Link a folder once
Point a project at a directory the first time. Every jump after — editor, repo, workspace — is instant, and the path stays local to your machine.

Why it exists

Four problems no planner solves.

01

“What did I actuallydo?”

Notion and Linear answer what needs to be done. Neither answers what you've been doing. Across several projects, that question gets very hard to answer honestly without a record.

02

Journaling without the friction

Most journaling apps make you context-switch into “journaling mode.” A menubar app with slash commands lets you log a thought in under five seconds — without ever leaving the work.

03

The neglect problem

When you run five projects, one of them is being quietly starved of attention. The heatmap makes that visible — shown as days since you last logged, stated neutrally, never as a nag.

04

An honest record

Most tools let you check things off before you do them, then edit history. Trace grounds everything in activity events, and locks them after 24 hours. The record stays honest because it can't be rewritten.

Deliberately not

What Trace refuses to be.

The discipline is the product. Every “no” below is a decision, not a missing feature.

✕Not a ~~planner~~

✕Not a ~~team tool~~

✕Not a ~~knowledge base~~

✕Not ~~gamified~~

✕Not ~~AI-powered~~

✕No ~~accounts or sync~~

No due dates, no reminders, no streaks-as-achievements. One person, one machine, one SQLite file. Phase 0 ships zero AI features — the loop gets proven before anything clever is added.

Design principles

How every decision gets made.

01

Frictionless logging beats every other feature.

One shortcut, one short string, Enter. If logging takes more than that, the tool has failed. This overrides every other consideration.

02

The tool does not act on you; you act on it.

No notifications, no nags, no badge on the menubar icon — only a timer countdown while you've chosen to run one. You open the app. The app never opens you.

03

Asymmetric friction matches asymmetric importance.

Tasks are cheap to delete. Journal entries require confirmation. Archiving is a quiet toggle in the project header; permanent deletion doesn't exist.

An honest record of what you actually did.

Everything runs through one input.

Every screen, one keystroke from the menubar.

The global view

Inside a project

A journal per project

Nothing is ever deleted

The heatmap reflects real work — and it can't be edited into a lie.

Per-project, day by day

Combined across every project

Small surface. More range than it looks.

Tags & filtering

Click a day, see the receipts

Combined view across projects

Focus timers, in the menubar

Tasks that age & reorder

Fully local, SQLite-backed

Jump into the work without leaving the record.

Open in Cursor

Open in cmux

Open the repo

Link once, reuse forever

Open in Cursor

Link a folder once

Four problems no planner solves.

“What did I actuallydo?”

Journaling without the friction

The neglect problem

An honest record

What Trace refuses to be.

How every decision gets made.

Frictionless logging beats every other feature.

The tool does not act on you; you act on it.

Asymmetric friction matches asymmetric importance.

Start keeping an honest record.