Alfred

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

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Build me a launcher that replaces Alfred — and understand why this is ALMOST.

The keyword-and-search half is a weekend. The half that is not is **system access**: a global hotkey that works over every application, clipboard monitoring, file search against the operating system's own index, and controlling other applications. None of that is reachable from a browser or a script, and on macOS each piece needs a specific permission the user grants by hand. Budget for that, and for a one-off price that is genuinely hard to beat.

STACK
- A native application: Swift and AppKit on macOS, or Tauri if it must be cross-platform. Electron is too slow to open for something bound to a hotkey
- SQLite through better-sqlite3 or the platform's own store, on device
- No server, no account, no network. A launcher that phones home is a launcher that reads everything you type

THE ONE MEASUREMENT
- From hotkey to a visible window with the cursor ready: under 50 milliseconds, every time, including cold. This is bound to a reflex, and anything slower gets abandoned within a week
- Results appear as you type, ranked, with the first one correct often enough that you press Enter without reading. Measure that hit rate on your own usage and tune the ranking against it

WHAT IT SEARCHES
- Applications, from the system's own locations, indexed at start and watched for changes
- Files, through the operating system's search index rather than by walking the disk. Walking is why homemade launchers are slow
- Contacts, browser bookmarks and history, and system commands — sleep, lock, empty the bin
- A calculator that handles units and currency, with rates fetched occasionally and cached
- Ranking by frecency: recent and frequent both count, and a chosen result trains the ranking for that exact query string. That learning is most of why a launcher feels clever

CLIPBOARD HISTORY
- A monitor storing every copied item with its source application and time, searchable, with images and files as well as text
- Excluded applications, and a rule that anything from a password manager is never stored. Get that wrong once and you have written a credential harvester
- Retention configurable, and a real purge

SNIPPETS
- Expansion by keyword as you type, with placeholders for the date, the clipboard and a cursor position
- Collections that can be enabled per application

WORKFLOWS
- A workflow is a keyword, an input, and a chain of steps: run a script, call an endpoint, open a URL, act on a file, show a list to choose from
- Defined as files in a directory, so they can be shared, versioned and edited in an editor
- Each runs in a sandbox with a timeout, and output errors are shown rather than swallowed
- The ecosystem of other people's workflows is what you cannot replicate. Build the three you use daily; that is usually the whole of it

THE PERMISSIONS CONVERSATION
- Accessibility, input monitoring, full disk access and automation permissions, each requested when first needed with a plain explanation of why
- Everything degrades gracefully without them rather than failing silently
- Document exactly what each permission is used for. An application asking for input monitoring deserves to be questioned

OPERATIONS
- Configuration and workflows in a plain directory the user can back up
- No telemetry of any kind. Not one event

WHAT MATTERS MOST
The 50 milliseconds and the frecency ranking. Build the window, the index and the ranking first and live with it for a fortnight; if the first result is not usually right, no number of features will save it.