flightrecorder

A system-level service that preserves ephemeral text input, so that work doesn't disappear after critical failures

Like an airplane's black box, flightrecorder runs quietly in the background, capturing your text input across applications. When disaster strikes—app crashes, network failures, accidental refreshes, or just plain bugs—your work is safe and recoverable.

The Problem

Modern applications are shockingly bad at preserving your work:

• App crashes wipe out that detailed prompt you spent 10 minutes crafting
• Network errors swallow form submissions into the void
• Accidental refreshes obliterate unsaved text
• Session timeouts discard everything without warning
• Buggy apps throw errors and auto-refresh, taking your input with them

The psychological toll is real: the anxiety of potential data loss poisons the entire experience of using otherwise-good tools. You shouldn't need to defensively copy everything to a text editor "just in case."

The Solution

flightrecorder is your safety net:

• 🔇 Silent: Runs as a background daemon, zero interaction required
• 🔒 Private: All data stays local, no network access, fully auditable
• 🎯 Selective: Captures text fields and clipboard, not raw keystrokes
• 🛡️ Privacy-aware: Filters sensitive patterns, ignores password fields
• 🔍 Searchable: Find what you lost with powerful search
• 🧹 Self-maintaining: Automatic pruning keeps storage bounded
• 🐧🍎 Cross-platform: Linux (X11 + Wayland) and macOS

Installation

# From source
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/flightrecorder.git
cd flightrecorder
cargo build --release
cargo install --path .

# Start the daemon
flightrecorder daemon start

Usage

# Check status
flightrecorder status

# Search your history
flightrecorder search "that prompt I wrote"

# Recover recent input
flightrecorder recover --last 10

# Recover from a specific app
flightrecorder recover --app "Claude" --last 5

# Recover from a time range
flightrecorder recover --since "1 hour ago"

# Interactive recovery (TUI)
flightrecorder recover --interactive

How It Works

flightrecorder uses two complementary capture strategies:

1. Clipboard Monitoring

Every clipboard operation is captured with:

• Timestamp
• Source application (when detectable)
• Content hash (for deduplication)

This catches explicit copies and many form submissions that apps place on the clipboard.

2. Accessibility-Based Text Field Snapshots

Using platform accessibility APIs, flightrecorder periodically snapshots text from:

• Active text input fields
• Text areas and editors
• Form fields

This provides comprehensive coverage even when you forget to copy.

Privacy & Security

• No network access: The daemon has no ability to transmit data
• No raw keylogging: We capture text field contents, not individual keystrokes
• Sensitive data filtering: Configurable patterns for passwords, API keys, credit cards
• Password field detection: Automatically skips password input fields
• Local storage only: Everything stays in ~/.local/share/flightrecorder/
• Fully open source: Audit every line of code

Configuration

# ~/.config/flightrecorder/config.toml

[capture]
# Snapshot interval for text fields (seconds)
snapshot_interval = 5

# Minimum text length to capture
min_length = 10

# Applications to exclude
exclude_apps = ["1Password", "Bitwarden", "KeePassXC"]

[privacy]
# Patterns to filter (regex)
filter_patterns = [
    "(?i)password",
    "(?i)api[_-]?key",
    "(?i)secret",
    "\\b\\d{4}[- ]?\\d{4}[- ]?\\d{4}[- ]?\\d{4}\\b",  # Credit cards
]

[storage]
# Where to store captured data
data_dir = "~/.local/share/flightrecorder"

# Maximum storage size (MB)
max_size_mb = 500

# Retention period (days)
retention_days = 30

Architecture

flightrecorder/
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs              # CLI entry point
│   ├── daemon/
│   │   ├── mod.rs           # Daemon orchestration
│   │   ├── clipboard.rs     # Clipboard monitoring
│   │   └── accessibility.rs # Text field snapshots
│   ├── platform/
│   │   ├── mod.rs           # Platform abstraction
│   │   ├── macos/           # macOS implementations
│   │   └── linux/           # Linux (X11 + Wayland)
│   ├── storage/
│   │   ├── mod.rs           # Storage abstraction
│   │   ├── database.rs      # SQLite storage
│   │   └── pruning.rs       # Automatic cleanup
│   ├── privacy/
│   │   ├── mod.rs           # Privacy filtering
│   │   └── patterns.rs      # Sensitive data detection
│   └── cli/
│       ├── mod.rs           # CLI commands
│       ├── search.rs        # Search functionality
│       └── recover.rs       # Recovery interface
├── config/
│   └── default.toml         # Default configuration
└── docs/
    ├── ARCHITECTURE.md      # Detailed design docs
    ├── PRIVACY.md           # Privacy deep-dive
    └── PLATFORM_SUPPORT.md  # Platform-specific notes

Platform Support

Building

# Debug build
cargo build

# Release build
cargo build --release

# Run tests
cargo test

# Run with logging
RUST_LOG=debug cargo run -- daemon start

Comparison to Alternatives

Why "flightrecorder"?

Like an airplane's flight data recorder (black box):

• Runs silently in the background
• You forget it's there until you need it
• Invaluable for disaster recovery
• Captures just enough to reconstruct what happened

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Areas where help is especially appreciated:

• Wayland text field capture improvements
• Additional platform support
• Privacy pattern suggestions
• UI/UX for the recovery interface

License

MIT License - See LICENSE for details.

Stop losing your work. Start recording what happens in-flight.