Introduction
A capture tool for AI-assisted work that runs on macOS and Linux, and lets agents read and write your queue directly.
magpie is a capture tool for people working across ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and agent CLIs. One hotkey saves whatever you're looking at into a running stream, without switching windows or losing focus on what you were doing.
Two things set it apart from a typical clipboard manager:
Runs on Linux
Most tools in this space are macOS-only. magpie's capture backend is built against portable platform primitives (the clipboard, the freedesktop screenshot portal) rather than macOS-specific APIs where an alternative exists.
Agents can read and write the queue
A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server exposes the capture queue directly to Claude Code, Cursor, and anything else that speaks MCP -- captures aren't just for you to re-read later, they can become work items an agent drains.
The core loop
- Capture -- press a hotkey while looking at anything (a ChatGPT answer, a terminal error, a GitHub issue). It lands in the stream with provenance (which app, and on macOS with Accessibility granted, the window title) attached automatically.
- Promote -- decide a captured item is actually actionable, and pull it into
Now, a short working queue scoped to the current project. - Hand off -- an agent connected over MCP leases an item from
Now, works it, and reports back done or failed. Every action is logged to an audit trail you can review.
Nothing is auto-filed or auto-categorized. The stream is everything you've ever captured, in one
reverse-chronological list; Now is only what you've deliberately decided is worth acting on.
See Stream and Now for why that split exists.
Where to go next
Installation
Build magpie from source (no signed releases yet).
Quick Start
Capture your first item and promote it into Now.
MCP integration
Register magpie with Claude Code or Cursor and drive the queue from an agent.
CLI reference
Every magpie subcommand, for scripting and for agent CLIs that don't speak MCP.
Status
magpie is early and functional, not yet a polished 1.0. The capture core, MCP server, and CLI work end-to-end on macOS. On Linux, the full test suite runs in CI on every push, but nobody has yet run the actual desktop app on a real Linux machine by hand -- see Architecture for exactly what's verified versus what's implemented-but-untested. There are no signed releases yet; see Installation for building from source.
magpie is GPL-3.0 licensed and developed in the open at github.com/akshaykrishh/magpie.