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Tora

Everything you copy lands on a deck of cards you can search, pin, organise into boards, and paste straight back into the app you were using. Local by default, no telemetry. Built with Electron now, with a pure core designed to power a React Native iOS app later.

Install

macOS 12 or later (Apple Silicon or Intel).

Homebrew (recommended):

brew tap mocarram/tap
brew install --cask tora
# Builds are unsigned for now, so clear Gatekeeper once after installing.
# Update any time with `brew upgrade --cask tora`.
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Tora.app

Manual download:

1. Download the latest DMG from the Releases page - Tora-<version>-arm64.dmg on Apple Silicon, Tora-<version>-x64.dmg on Intel.
2. Open the dmg and drag Tora into Applications.
3. Because the build is not yet notarized, right-click the app → Open on first launch (or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Tora.app). See TESTING.md for details.
4. Grant Accessibility when prompted - it lets Tora paste straight back into the app you were using.

Updates come through brew upgrade while the app is unsigned. Once it's signed

• notarized, the in-app updater takes over (checks on launch, downloads quietly, shows a Restart pill); the manual quarantine step also becomes unnecessary then.

Features

• Captures text, rich text, images, files, URLs, colours, and code, with source app and per-type previews (syntax-highlighted code, colour swatches, image thumbnails, file sizes, link hosts).
• Consecutive-duplicate dedup, retention from 1 day to unlimited (with a storage indicator and an unlimited-history warning).
• Instant multi-term substring search across clips, source apps, and board names, with Aa (match case) and ab (whole word) toggles; full keyboard navigation; sub-50ms at 10k+ items.
• Pinboards: named, reorderable, drag a card to add it, items in many boards, a default Favourites board, quick type filters.
• Queue paste: select multiple clips and paste them in sequence, keep-formatting or force-plain.
• Direct paste into the previously focused app via Accessibility, keep-formatting by default with a plain-text modifier.
• Frameless vibrancy panel summoned by a global hotkey (default Cmd+Shift+V), plus a resizable full window; menu-bar icon with pause/resume; launch at login.
• Privacy: local by default; optional Touch ID app lock. The local store itself is plain SQLite + files, protected by owner-only file permissions and (on a standard Mac) FileVault - not app-level encryption.
• Optional end-to-end encrypted sync over iCloud Drive (see SYNC.md): synced data is AES-256-GCM encrypted on-device before it leaves; the key lives in the macOS Keychain.

Architecture

src/
  core/      pure, platform-agnostic TS (model, capture classify, parsers,
             search ranking, sync conflict resolution). No Electron, no Node.
             Unit-tested. Reused by the future iOS app.
  main/      Electron main: clipboard capture, SQLite storage + blob store,
             IPC, global hotkey, windows, menu bar, paste injection, sync.
  preload/   single secure contextBridge surface (window.tora).
  renderer/  React + Vite UI. No direct disk/clipboard access.
  shared/    IPC contract types.

Security: contextIsolation on, nodeIntegration off, sandbox on, a strict CSP, navigation locked down, and exactly one typed IPC surface. The renderer never touches disk or the clipboard directly.

Docs: DESIGN.md (design system), DATA.md (schema), SYNC.md (sync), SUMMARY.md (decisions + measured perf), GAPS.md (stubs + unverified), RELEASE.md (signing/notarization).

Kept platform-agnostic for iOS

src/core has zero Electron or Node imports (enforced by an ESLint rule). The item model, capture classification, parsers, search ranking, and the entire sync conflict-resolution model live there. A React Native iOS app would reuse core/ as-is and provide its own SyncController transport and pasteboard reader; the SQLite schema and sync_state map across unchanged (see DATA.md).

Develop

Requires Node 22+.

npm install          # downloads the Electron binary; then on macOS:
npm run rebuild      # rebuild better-sqlite3 against the Electron ABI
npm run dev          # launch the app with HMR
npm test             # unit + integration tests (node)
npm run typecheck    # strict TS, node + web projects
npm run lint         # ESLint (strict, no-any, no em dash, core import guard)
npm run build        # typecheck + build main/preload/renderer
npm run size         # check built bundle sizes against bundle-budget.json
npm run dist:mac     # package a .dmg (see RELEASE.md for signing)

Branch model and CI gates are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Headless CI skips the Electron binary by exporting ELECTRON_SKIP_BINARY_DOWNLOAD=1 as a workflow env var (see .github/workflows/ci.yml); local installs download it normally.

Status

Implemented and verified per phase; core is pure and tested; the secure Electron config is in place; the design is custom and documented. The GUI and macOS-native paths (vibrancy, Accessibility paste, Touch ID, real iCloud, packaging) were built against local defaults and could not be runtime-verified on the Linux build host. Every such gap is listed honestly in GAPS.md.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. The branch model, commit conventions, and CI gates are documented in CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT (c) 2026 Mocarram Hossain.