Clipwell

A fast, cross-platform clipboard-history service that any app can query, listen to, and drive.

Clipwell is built as a headless daemon with a thin UI on top. The daemon watches the system clipboard, stores typed history in SQLite, and exposes everything over a public API — REST, WebSocket/SSE, and MCP — so the picker UI, the CLI, editor extensions, and AI agents are all just clients of the same contract. Nothing is hidden behind a private backdoor.

The daemon, a native Avalonia picker, a Solid + Tauri web UI, the CLI, MCP (stdio + HTTP), a plugin host, and two docs sites all ship. See the ADRs under engineering/.

The product updates page pairs dated source changes with light and dark product captures. Film source and its review-gated narration workflow live in media/changelog/.

Why

• Queryable by anything — REST for one-shot calls, WebSocket/SSE to live-stream clipboard changes, MCP so Claude (and other agents) can read and act on your clipboard history.
• Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, and Linux behind one clipboard-watcher interface.
• Fast — the picker is pre-warmed and shows in single-digit milliseconds on the global hotkey (Alt+Shift+V on Windows). It runs in the background with a tray icon.
• Extensible — typed clipboard items and content-aware actions load as plugins.

Repository layout

daemon/        clipboard watcher + SQLite history + REST/WS(SSE)/MCP server (.NET 10)
protocol/      shared domain model + plugin contract (IClipDetector / IClipAction)
cli/           clipwell list/pin/clear — a reference API consumer
ui/            native picker (Avalonia 12, cross-platform)
webui/         web-view picker (Solid + Vite + Tailwind, Bun) wrapped with Tauri 2
mcp/           stdio MCP wrapper that proxies to the running daemon
plugins/       sample plugin (IClipDetector / IClipAction) + plugin docs
docs/          user-facing feature documentation site
engineering/   how-it-was-built engineering site (architecture, ADRs, perf)

Build

Requires the .NET 10 SDK.

dotnet build
dotnet run --project daemon      # clipboard daemon on http://127.0.0.1:8787
dotnet run --project ui          # the native picker (connects to the daemon)
dotnet run --project cli -- list # reference CLI client

Web UI

The web UI (webui/) is a second picker on a web stack. Open it in any browser at http://127.0.0.1:8787/app while the daemon runs, or build the desktop app:

cd webui && bun install
bun run tauri dev                # desktop app (needs Rust + platform webview tools)

API surface

The daemon exposes the same history three ways:

• REST — GET /api/clipboard, /counts, /search, /item/{ts}, /settings, /image/{ts}, POST /delete, /clear, /pin, /sensitive, /rename, /edit. Machine-readable spec at GET /openapi/v1.json (also checked in at openapi/clipwell.v1.json). List and search accept excludeSensitive=true for clients that must omit flagged items.
• Live — GET /api/clipboard/stream (SSE) and /api/clipboard/ws (WebSocket) push a clipboard.changed event on every capture.
• MCP — over HTTP/SSE in-daemon at POST /mcp, or the mcp/ stdio server, both exposing clipboard_recent, clipboard_search, clipboard_get_text, and clipboard_clear. Point an MCP client at the /mcp URL or the built Clipwell.Mcp executable (CLIPWELL_API, default http://127.0.0.1:8787). MCP list/search omit flagged sensitive items, and get-text refuses them.

License

MIT