Native macOS prompt manager and snippet launcher for ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Copilot, VS Code, and Terminal.
PromptPanel is a local-first macOS prompt manager, AI prompt launcher, and snippet launcher. Press a global hotkey, search your local prompt library, and paste reusable prompts, code snippets, templates, and instructions into ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Copilot, VS Code, Terminal, browsers, or any text field.
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PromptPanel is an open-source, native macOS prompt manager and snippet launcher designed for the way AI power users actually work. Press a global hotkey from anywhere — ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, VS Code, your terminal, your browser — and a lightweight panel slides in. Type a few characters, hit Enter, and the entry lands in your current input box. No account. No cloud. No syncing service. Everything stays on your Mac.
If you've been hunting for an AI prompt library, a TextExpander alternative for prompts, an open-source snippet launcher for macOS, or a way to stop pasting the same instructions into Claude and ChatGPT a hundred times a day — that is exactly what PromptPanel does.
Common ways people look for this project: ChatGPT prompt manager for macOS, Claude prompt library, Cursor snippet manager, local-first prompt library, global hotkey paste tool, Raycast snippets alternative for AI prompts, and open-source TextExpander alternative for multiline prompts.
PromptPanel exists because the same five problems show up every day for anyone working with LLMs:
- You retype the same role / system prompt ("you are a senior staff engineer…") into a fresh ChatGPT or Claude chat ten times a day.
- You keep a Notes app or scratchpad full of AI prompts and code-review checklists and
⌘+Fyour way through it. - You finally find the right prompt and the paste fails silently because focus moved or the app blocked synthetic keystrokes.
- Your Cursor / Copilot project context block is in one file, the terminal command snippet in another, and the PR-review prompt in a third — none searchable from one place.
- You won't put a real client brief or proprietary architecture into a cloud prompt manager, so you end up with no prompt manager at all.
PromptPanel collapses all of that into a single, sub-second loop with a local SQLite file you fully own.
Most "prompt managers" are either browser extensions (locked to one site), or generic snippet tools that weren't built for the AI workflow. PromptPanel is purpose-built around one short loop:
hotkey → search → enter → content lands in the active input field
Everything else is in service of making that loop fast, predictable, and never lossy.
| You want… | PromptPanel gives you |
|---|---|
| A prompt library that works across every app, not just one website | Global hotkey, native macOS panel, works in any text field |
| Speed — sub-second from keypress to typing | < 300 ms hotkey-to-focus target, < 100 ms search refresh target, < 250 ms execution target |
| Project isolation so client A's prompts don't leak into client B | First-class projects + a built-in Universal project for shared content |
| No cloud lock-in for sensitive prompts | Local SQLite. Zero network calls for core features. Your data is a single file you own |
| Auto-paste that doesn't silently fail | Auto-paste first, clipboard fallback always — and a clear toast if paste was blocked |
| Keyboard-only operation | Summon → type → arrow-keys → Enter. Mouse never required |
| Open source you can audit, fork, and trust | MIT license, plain Swift, no telemetry |
- Heavy ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini users who reuse the same role definitions, output-format constraints, and context blocks
- Cursor / Copilot / Aider users who paste the same architecture summaries and review checklists
- Developers who repeatedly type commit-message scaffolds, code review templates, terminal commands, error-triage snippets
- Indie hackers and consultants juggling multiple client projects with different style guides and tone-of-voice rules
- Technical writers and PMs who maintain reusable replies, status updates, and spec scaffolds
If "I copy and paste the same multiline prompt twenty times a day" describes you, this tool was written for you.
- 🔥 Global hotkey — summon the panel from any foreground app, configurable shortcut
- ⚡ < 300 ms time-to-input —
NSPanel-based, no Electron, no web runtime, no cold start - 🔍 Instant search across title and body, no submit step
- 🗂️ Projects — isolate prompts per client, repo, or context;
Universalproject always visible - 📋 Auto-paste with clipboard fallback — uses
CGEventto send ⌘V, falls back gracefully if Accessibility permission is missing - 🎯 Keyboard-first — arrow keys to navigate, Enter to execute, Esc to dismiss
- 📌 Pin & sort — pin frequent entries, manual sort, then by recency, then by usage count
- 🌗 Light / dark / system theme
- 🪶 Menu-bar resident — out of the way until you summon it
- 🚀 Launch at login via
SMAppService - 🔐 Permission-aware degradation — without Accessibility, you still get one-key copy and a clear UI hint
- 📝 Multiline content — full template bodies, no length limit on storage
- 📊 Execution log for diagnosing paste failures
- 🔄 Manual update via GitHub Releases (Sparkle auto-update is wired in but ships off-by-default; the maintainer will enable it once a signed appcast feed is hosted)
By design PromptPanel will never add cloud sync, team collaboration, or complex workflow orchestration. These are not "later" — they are out of scope forever. The tool is a single-user, local-only utility, and that is the point. See PRD §4.2 for the rationale.
Quick Panel — ⌥2 from any app |
Library — projects, entries, use-count tiers |
|---|---|
|
 |
| Smaller panel — compact footprint over any editor | Settings — preferences, permissions, maintenance |
 |
 |
┌──────────────┐ hotkey ┌──────────────┐ select ┌──────────────┐
│ any app │ ──────────► │ PromptPanel │ ──────────► │ clipboard │
│ (ChatGPT, │ (global) │ NSPanel │ (Enter) │ (write) │
│ Claude, │ │ │ └──────┬───────┘
│ Cursor…) │ ◄──────────── │ │ │
└──────────────┘ paste / focus└──────────────┘ │
▲ restored │
└────────── CGEvent ⌘V (Accessibility permission) ◄───────────┘
fallback: clipboard only + toast
- You press the configured hotkey (
KeyboardShortcutslibrary captures it system-wide). - PromptPanel snaps an
NSPanelover the active window, focuses the search field, and shows entries from the current project plus theUniversalproject, sorted by pin → manual → recency → usage count. - You type to filter (live, no submit), arrow to choose, press
Enter. - The selected content is always written to the system clipboard first (this is the guarantee — clipboard never silently fails).
- The panel hides, the previous app regains focus, and PromptPanel synthesizes a
⌘VviaCGEvent. If Accessibility permission is missing or the target app blocks synthetic events, a toast tells you "Copied — press ⌘V to paste." - Execution is logged locally so you can diagnose any per-app paste issue later.
This separation — clipboard as guarantee, auto-paste as best-effort — is the single most important design decision in the project.
System requirement: macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Apple Silicon and Intel both supported.
# 1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/tytsxai/PromptPanel.git
cd PromptPanel
# 2. Build the .app bundle (signed ad-hoc by default)
./scripts/build-app.sh
# 3. Move it into Applications (or run from dist/)
open dist/PromptPanel.appRequirements for building:
- Xcode 15+ with the macOS 14 SDK
- Swift 5.10 toolchain (
xcrun swift --version)
Once a tagged release is published, a notarized .dmg will be attached. Until then, build locally — it takes ~30 seconds on Apple Silicon.
- Grant Accessibility permission when prompted. macOS uses this to allow synthetic
⌘Vkeystrokes. Without it, PromptPanel still copies to clipboard reliably; you just paste manually. - Set your hotkey in Settings → Hotkey. The current default is
⌥2; pick another shortcut if it conflicts with your setup. - Create a project or start adding entries to
Universal.
1. ⌥2 → panel appears, search field focused
2. type "review" → filters to your code-review prompt
3. ↵ → content pasted into the active text field
4. (panel hides) → keep working
You can switch the active project from inside the panel without opening the main window — keyboard-only, no detour.
| Setting | Where | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Global hotkey | Settings → Hotkey | One shortcut. Toggle behavior: same key dismisses |
| Theme | Settings → Appearance | Light / dark / follow system |
| Launch at login | Settings → General | Uses SMAppService |
| Update channel | GitHub Releases (manual) | Sparkle 2 is wired in but disabled until a signed appcast is hosted; subscribe to release notifications and replace the .app |
| Database location | ~/Library/Application Support/PromptPanel/promptpanel.db |
Single-file SQLite, easy to back up |
| Logs | ~/Library/Logs/PromptPanel/ |
Inspected via the main window's "Runtime Health" |
- Local-first by definition. Your prompts live in a single SQLite file on your Mac. The app does not POST your content anywhere.
- No telemetry. No analytics SDKs, no metrics endpoints, no crash reporting service.
- Network access is zero in the current release. Sparkle is bundled but the update feed is not configured, so no outbound calls happen at all unless a future build ships with an appcast.
- No accounts. There is nothing to sign in to.
- Open source. Audit
Sources/PromptPanel/Core/to verify any of the above.
If your prompts contain proprietary information — internal architecture, client briefs, NDA-bound context — this is exactly the property you want.
Quick orientation, not a takedown. These tools are good at what they do.
| PromptPanel | TextExpander | Espanso | Raycast Snippets | Alfred Snippets | Browser prompt extensions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open source | ✅ MIT | ❌ | ✅ GPLv3 | Partial | ❌ | varies |
| macOS native (no Electron / web runtime) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Works in any app (not just browser) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Quick-search panel UI (not just trigger strings) | ✅ | partial | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | varies |
| Project / context isolation | ✅ first-class | groups | folders | folders | folders | rare |
| Keyboard-only flow | ✅ | partial | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | varies |
| Local-only / no cloud option | ✅ default | optional, paid tiers nudge cloud | ✅ | account required | ✅ | usually cloud |
| Free | ✅ | $$$ | ✅ | freemium | requires Powerpack | varies |
| Built specifically around AI prompt workflow | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ but browser-only |
TL;DR: if you live in the browser only, a browser extension is fine. If you live in Cursor/VS Code/Terminal/Slack/everywhere, you want something native and panel-based. Among native panel-based options, PromptPanel is the open-source, AI-prompt-shaped one.
Concrete ways people use PromptPanel day-to-day — these double as the long-tail "how do I..." questions PromptPanel is built to answer.
- Spin up a fresh ChatGPT / Claude chat with your standard role / system prompt. Hotkey → type
role→ Enter. No more retyping "You are a senior staff engineer who..." for the 200th time. - Drop a Cursor / Copilot project-context block into a new file. Have a multi-paragraph "here is the architecture, conventions, and constraints" block stored once; paste into any new Cursor session with one keystroke.
- Paste a code-review checklist into a PR draft. Long bulleted checklist lives in PromptPanel; one hotkey appends it to a GitHub PR description.
- Fire a repeating terminal command with the exact flag combo.
kubectl get pods --context=prod --namespace=… -o jsonpath=…— typed once, stored, summoned by short search string. - Insert a meeting-notes template into Notion / Obsidian / Apple Notes. Same template every Monday standup → one hotkey, zero copy-paste from a Notes app scratchpad.
- Push a customer-service / sales reply template into Slack or email. Different tone per template, picked from a quick-search panel rather than a Notes folder.
- Switch between projects with isolated prompt sets. Each project group keeps its own role prompts, snippets, and templates so context never bleeds across clients.
- Language: Swift 5.10
- UI: AppKit (
NSPanel,NSStatusItem) + SwiftUI - Storage: SQLite via GRDB.swift
- Hotkey: sindresorhus/KeyboardShortcuts (Carbon Hot Key under the hood)
- Auto-paste:
CGEventsynthesizing ⌘V after focus restoration - Login item:
SMAppService - Updater: Sparkle 2
- Distribution: Developer ID + Apple notarization (no Mac App Store)
- Build: Swift Package Manager — no Xcode project required
See docs/技术选型.md for the full decision log.
PromptPanel/
├── Sources/PromptPanel/
│ ├── App/ # AppDelegate, AppState, lifecycle
│ ├── Core/
│ │ ├── Database/ # SQLite open / migrate / recover
│ │ ├── Repositories/ # Project, Entry, Settings, Log
│ │ ├── Services/ # PanelService, ExecuteService, SearchService…
│ │ ├── Diagnostics/ # Hotkey-to-focus timing
│ │ └── Utils/
│ ├── Integrations/ # Clipboard, Paste (CGEvent), Tray, Hotkey, Updater
│ ├── Features/
│ │ ├── Panel/ # QuickPanelView + ViewModel — the hero feature
│ │ └── MainWindow/ # Library + Settings
│ └── Resources/ # Info.plist, entitlements, AppIcon, Assets
├── Tests/PromptPanelTests/
├── frontend-draft/ # UI source-of-truth (HTML/JSX mockups + screenshots)
├── scripts/ # build-app.sh, notarize, release readiness, restore
├── docs/ # public architecture, FAQ, PRD, release, ops, handoff docs
├── .github/ # contribution, security, conduct, issue/PR templates, CI
├── llms.txt # short AI-search / LLM-readable project index
├── codemeta.json # structured open-source software metadata
└── Package.swift # SwiftPM package definition
The public documentation set is part of the repository:
- Documentation index
- FAQ
- Product PRD
- Project introduction
- Architecture
- Core modules and logic
- API and feature contract
- Configuration
- Deployment
- Development standards
- Usage examples
- Operations and troubleshooting
- Maintainer handoff guide
- Docs/code sync matrix
- Release and recovery
- Roadmap and contribution guide
- AI search and discoverability
- Full LLM context
- Search metadata JSON-LD
- Contributing
- Security
- CodeMeta software metadata
For answer engines and repository-aware AI tools, start with llms.txt or the expanded llms-full.txt.
PromptPanel keeps classic SEO and GEO surfaces in-repo so users and answer engines can identify the project accurately:
README.mdandREADME.zh-CN.mdgive the human landing-page summary and current screenshots.- llms.txt is the short AI-readable index for repository-aware tools.
- docs/ai-search/llms-full.txt is the expanded answer-engine context with FAQ-style answers.
- codemeta.json and Schema.org JSON-LD describe the app for software catalogs, search crawlers, and future docs-site publishing.
- AI search and discoverability defines the canonical wording, search-intent map, and maintenance checklist.
PromptPanel follows a deliberately small roadmap. The PRD lists items that are explicitly off the table forever (cloud sync, teams, workflow orchestration). Within scope:
- v1.0 — main link complete: hotkey → search → execute, projects, clipboard fallback, light/dark, login item, Sparkle, signing & notarization scripts
- One-tap "repeat last entry"
- JSON / Markdown import & export
- Variable templates (
{{name}}style) — only if it can be added without slowing the main link
See docs/路线图与贡献指南.md for prioritization rules, CHANGELOG.md for what's shipped, and issues for public planning.
For a longer FAQ, see FAQ.md. The greatest hits:
Yes. MIT license. No paid tier, no usage cap, no account.
Yes — it builds as a universal binary. Tested on both Apple Silicon and Intel macOS 14+.
No. The current release makes zero network calls. Sparkle is bundled but the update feed is not configured in this build, so no outbound traffic happens at all. Your prompt content never leaves your Mac.
To synthesize a ⌘V keystroke after the panel hides and your previous app regains focus. Without this permission the app still works — it just stops at the clipboard step and shows you a "press ⌘V to paste" toast.
No, deliberately. Those are listed as permanent non-goals in the PRD §4.2. The product's identity is "single-user, local-only, fast." Adding any of those would change what the product is.
The hottest paths in this product (global hotkey timing, focus restoration, synthetic keystroke injection, accessibility permission flow) are macOS system-integration concerns. A cross-platform shell adds latency and indirection without buying any features that matter for this product. See docs/技术选型.md for the full reasoning.
Open an issue: https://github.com/tytsxai/PromptPanel/issues. Please use the templates — they'll save us both round-trips.
Import is on the roadmap; for now you can write directly to the SQLite file or paste entries into the main window. PRs that add a clean importer for TextExpander / Espanso / Raycast format are very welcome.
PRs welcome — please read CONTRIBUTING.md first. Two non-obvious rules:
- UI changes must align with
frontend-draft/. That directory is the source of truth for visuals; don't ship a Swift view that contradicts the JSX mockup. - Stay inside the PRD's scope. If a proposal would push the product toward cloud / teams / workflows, it's a "no" regardless of how well-implemented it is. This isn't gatekeeping — it's the reason the tool is fast and trustworthy.
PromptPanel stands on:
- GRDB.swift by Gwendal Roué
- KeyboardShortcuts by Sindre Sorhus
- Sparkle by the Sparkle team
…and the broader Swift / AppKit community whose docs and Stack Overflow answers made the system-integration paths possible.
MIT © 2026 tytsxai and PromptPanel contributors.
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