ApexCompanion 0.2.0: a menu bar, and a coach that stops loudly

A menu bar, session goals, and a coach that stops loudly instead of failing quietly.

New

• Menu bar with live state: ◉ 23m while focused, ⏸ paused, "in a call", 🔇 muted. Pause 15 min, mute, edit your sites and stop, all from the menu.
• Session goal and length (25 / 50 / 90 min or no limit). Call-outs mention your goal; the classifier never sees it.
• Quiet during calls: Zoom, Teams, FaceTime, Webex and Meet tabs mean no screenshot and no voice.
• Praise is silent, and your persona is remembered.

Hardening

• Fixed a crash on first start: the app bundle was missing control.py. A test now checks that every module the app imports is shipped.
• Stops loudly when broken: after 6 failed or unreadable checks in a row it stops, shows ⚠︎ in the menu bar and tells you why, instead of counting the time as focus.
• One coach at a time, deadlines on every system call, a Screen Recording check that needs no developer tools, and frames left by a crash are swept at start.
• Pinned installs: the exact model snapshot and uv version CI tests with. A failed engine rebuild keeps your working one. Logs rotate at 1 MB.

Ceilings and the full gap list: HARDENING.md.

Install

Download ApexCompanion.zip, unzip, move it to Applications, then open it (right-click → Open the first time). Apple Silicon Mac, about 11 GB of memory at peak, so 24 GB is recommended. INSTALL.md

Upgrading? macOS treats this build as a new app, so turn Screen Recording on for ApexCompanion again when it asks.

Checksum: shasum -a 256 -c ApexCompanion.zip.sha256 in your Downloads folder.

ApexCompanion 0.1.2: see what your coach did

New: local logs and a session summary. Nothing leaves your Mac.

• When you stop the coach (open the app again → Stop), it shows your session: focus %, roasts, errors, and how long each step took.
• Each session writes one log file that only you can read, in ~/Library/Application Support/ApexCompanion/logs/. It keeps the site name, never the full address, and what was on screen only when a roast fired. Files older than 7 days are deleted automatically.
• Running from source: python report.py prints the same summary; --all and --json for more.

Fixes

• The app wrote its logs to a different folder than the docs said; it now uses the documented folder.
• A failed roast no longer ends the check.
• CI now runs and passes (lint + 69 tests on Apple Silicon).

After updating: macOS treats this build as a new app, so switch ApexCompanion on again in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording.

Install steps: INSTALL.md.

ApexCompanion 0.1.1: safer and more honest

Fixes from an 11-reviewer audit (independent verifier, senior AI engineer, critic, judge, users).

Safety and privacy

• Site rules match only the front app and the tab address (host + path), never text read off the screen, so a page can no longer flip a verdict. YouTube Shorts always count as distracting; your OK list still wins. A rule hit skips the screenshot and the model entirely.
• Spoken lines pass a word filter; a slur or injected instruction on screen is replaced by a fixed line instead of being read aloud.
• Logs keep the site host, not the full address, store what was on screen only when a roast fires, and are readable only by you.
• The coach no longer stops when the screen locks or the display sleeps.
• The start notification says how to stop it: open ApexCompanion again.

Honest numbers
Headline is now the blind set: 15/16 clear-cut real web pages the prompt never saw (95% interval about 72 to 99%), 0 false roasts on clear-cut pages. Pooled with the tuning set: 40/41 across 51 pages. Web pages only; native apps are not yet evaluated.

Install: download ApexCompanion.zip, unzip, open, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway (not notarized). Needs Apple Silicon, macOS 14+, 16 GB RAM, about 12 GB free disk for the one-time 8.3 GB model download. Steps: INSTALL.md.

ApexCompanion 0.1.0

First release: an on-device focus coach for Apple Silicon Macs. Gemma 4 watches your screen and a persona calls you out loud when you drift. Nothing leaves your Mac.

Install: download ApexCompanion.zip, unzip, open the app, pick The Closer or The Whip, list the sites you never want to get lost in, and switch on Screen Recording when asked. Full steps in INSTALL.md.

Needs: Apple Silicon, macOS 14+, about 10 GB free disk (one-time 8 GB model download), 16 GB RAM recommended.

Measured: 0.87 s per screen check (p50, M3 Max). 40/41 clear-cut real web pages correct with 0 false roasts across two eval batches (51 pages).

Known limits: the app is not notarized, so macOS asks you to approve it once in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. Native desktop apps are only covered by your site list, not by the eval.