AnthonyDavidAdams

Backscroll — Development skill for Claude Code

Development community

Local, searchable memory of your screen, queryable by Claude via MCP.

How to install Backscroll

This entry records only its repository, not the path inside it, so there is no exact command to give. Open AnthonyDavidAdams/backscroll and copy the folder into ~/.claude/skills/, or the file into ~/.claude/agents/.

What Backscroll does

Local, searchable memory of your screen, queryable by Claude via MCP. Open-source, zero-dependency, macOS-first alternative to Screenpipe.

Alternatives in Development

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Magnitude — Open source inference server your agent sets up for you 1.5k ★
Codenotch — A macOS app that pins usage limits from Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Antigravity to a screen edge 1.3k ★

README

Backscroll

**A local, searchable memory of everything on your screen — and the AI that queries it is your own Claude subscription.**

Backscroll is an open-source, zero-dependency, macOS-first alternative to [Screenpipe](https://screenpipe.com) / Rewind. It quietly captures your screen on an interval, runs on-device OCR, and stores the text in a local SQLite database with full-text search. Then it exposes that history as an **MCP server** — so Claude Code (or any MCP client) can answer questions like *"what was that error I saw an hour ago?"* or *"find the invoice number from that Stripe page"* without you paying for a separate model.

The whole point: **no bundled LLM, no API keys, no cloud.** The intelligence is whatever model is already driving your MCP client. If you have Claude Code Max, you already have everything you need to reason over your own screen history — Backscroll just hands it the data.

your screen  ->  screencapture  ->  Vision OCR  ->  SQLite + FTS5
                                                          |
                                                    MCP server
                                                          |
                                              Claude Code / any MCP client

Why it's different

Zero Python dependencies. Pure standard library plus one tiny Swift helper (compiled on first run). No pip install of a 400 MB ML stack.
On-device OCR via Apple's Vision framework — free, offline, fast.
Your model, your bill. The MCP server contains no model calls. Point it at Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or anything that speaks MCP.
Everything stays local. Frames and text never leave your machine. The database is a plain SQLite file you can inspect, back up, or delete.
Honest about privacy. Recording your screen is powerful and sensitive. Backscroll makes it a deliberate, inspectable, easily-revoked choice.