Screenpipe records your screen, listens to your microphone, and stores it all locally so AI agents can actually understand what happened during your workday. It launched on Y Combinator’s Summer 2026 batch and the concept is straightforward: give your AI tools real memory instead of making you re-explain everything from scratch.
What Screenpipe actually does
Most AI tools have zero context about your work. You tell Claude about a meeting, but it cannot see your notes from last week. You ask ChatGPT to draft an email, but it has no idea what your client discussed on the last call. Screenpipe fixes this by capturing everything that happens on your screen and audio, processing it locally, and making it searchable by AI agents.
The tool runs as a desktop app on macOS (with Windows and Linux support in progress). It records your screen activity, transcribes audio from meetings and calls, and stores everything in a local database. Nothing gets sent to a cloud server. Your data stays on your machine, which is a big deal for anyone working with sensitive information.
Once the data is captured, you can query it through integrations with Claude, Codex, or other AI agents. The website shows examples like “What did I tell John about pricing last month?” and the AI pulls the exact conversation from your recorded history. That is genuinely useful if you juggle multiple clients or projects.
How to set up Screenpipe
Getting started takes about five minutes. Download the app from screenpi.pe, install it, and grant the necessary permissions for screen recording and microphone access. The default settings work fine for most people.
After installation, Screenpipe starts recording automatically. You can configure it to exclude specific apps (like your banking app) and set retention policies so old data gets cleaned up. The interface is minimal, which is nice since this is a background tool you should not have to think about.
To query your history, you connect it to an AI agent. The most common setup is Claude through the API or Claude Desktop. Screenpipe acts as a context layer: when you ask Claude a question about your work, it pulls relevant screen and audio data to give the AI actual context instead of you manually pasting notes.
Pre-built agent templates
Screenpipe ships with a set of agent templates that handle common tasks automatically. Meeting notes is the most popular one. When a meeting ends, the agent generates a three-bullet summary, action items per person, and key decisions. It saves this to a local markdown file without any manual input.
Other templates include a CRM updater (logs client interactions), a deal spotter (flags potential opportunities from your recorded conversations), and a weekly report generator. These are defined in simple markdown files called “pipes” that you can customize or create from scratch.
Building your own agents
If the pre-built templates do not fit your workflow, you can write your own. A pipe is just a markdown file with a trigger condition, an AI model specification, and a set of instructions. The syntax is straightforward enough that you can create a basic agent in under 10 minutes, even if you have never written code before.
For example, you could create an agent that monitors your email app and drafts follow-up messages whenever a client email goes unanswered for 48 hours. Or one that tracks how much time you spend in each app and generates a weekly productivity report. The possibilities depend on what you record and what you want automated.
The privacy question
Recording everything on your screen sounds invasive. Screenpipe addresses this by processing everything locally and not sending data to external servers. The recordings stay on your machine, encrypted, and you control the retention policy.
But let’s be honest about the tradeoff. Even with local processing, you are creating a detailed log of everything you do on your computer. If someone gets access to your machine, they get access to that history too. For freelancers working with their own hardware, this is manageable. For employees on company laptops, you should check your company’s security policies before installing anything that records screen activity.
The app lets you exclude specific applications from recording, which helps. You can blacklist your password manager, banking apps, or anything else you want kept out of the history. And you can delete individual recordings at any time. There is also an incognito mode that pauses all recording with a single click, useful when you need to handle something private.
Who should actually use this
Screenpipe is not for everyone. If you work a standard 9-to-5 with predictable tasks and one or two tools, you probably do not need it. But if any of these describe your work, it is worth trying:
- Freelancers juggling multiple clients who need to remember what each one discussed
- Sales reps handling many concurrent deals and conversations
- Consultants who bill by the hour and need accurate time tracking
- Remote workers who have lots of video calls and cannot take detailed notes in real time
- Anyone who uses Claude or other AI tools daily and wants them to actually understand their context
If you are already using AI note-taking apps but find they do not capture enough context, Screenpipe fills that gap by going beyond just notes to recording the actual screen interactions.
How it compares to alternatives
There is nothing else quite like Screenpipe on the market right now. Claude and ChatGPT have memory features, but they only remember what you type in the chat. They do not see your screen, hear your calls, or know what happened in the 20 browser tabs you had open during a meeting. Screenpipe captures all of that.
Tools like Rewind (now called Limitless) offer similar screen recording but focus on personal productivity rather than AI agent integration. Screenpipe is built specifically to feed context into AI agents, which is a different approach and one that is more valuable if you already use AI tools daily for work tasks.
What it costs
Screenpipe has a free tier that covers the basics: local recording, search, and a few agent templates. The paid plan adds more storage, advanced agent templates, and priority support. The exact pricing changes, so check their website for current numbers.
For most people starting out, the free tier is enough to see if the concept works for your workflow. If you find yourself using it daily, the paid version makes sense.
The real value: context, not recording
The recording part sounds like the main feature, but it is not. The real value is giving your AI tools context they never had before. Right now, every time you start a new chat with an AI assistant, you start from zero. You paste notes, describe meetings, explain background. It is tedious and you always leave something out.
Screenpipe eliminates that friction. Your AI already knows what happened because it was there. It saw the screen, heard the audio, processed the data. When you ask “what did the client say about the timeline last week?” it does not guess. It pulls the actual conversation.
This matters a lot if you are using AI to automate parts of your workflow. An AI agent that understands your context can do far more than one operating blind. Meeting summaries, follow-up emails, project updates, and status reports can all be generated automatically, grounded in your actual work history.
The tool is still early. The Y Combinator launch just happened, and the team is actively adding features. But the core concept, giving AI agents real memory of your work, is something that will likely become standard across AI tools in the next year or two. Screenpipe is one of the first to ship it in a usable form, and it is worth paying attention to.
