README.md

Impulse Offloader

“If you have the impulse to talk about something, let’s capture that.”

Impulse Offloader is a local-first ADHD thought-capture tool. The project helps you quickly record thoughts as they arrive, organize them, and resurface insights later.

Quick Start

1. Install dependencies

   python -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Configure environment Create a .env file (it is ignored by git) with:

   OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key_here
   VAULT_PATH=/absolute/path/to/vault

3. Capture your first impulse

   python -m impulse_offloader.capture "My first captured thought."

4. Process captured notes (optional MVP step)

   python -m impulse_offloader.process

Folder Structure

impulse-offloader/
├── README.md
├── requirements.txt
├── .gitignore
├── LICENSE
├── impulse_offloader/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── capture.py
│   ├── process.py
│   ├── dashboard.py
│   └── utils/
│       ├── file_ops.py
│       ├── openai_helpers.py
│       └── whisper_integration.py
├── vault/
│   ├── Inbox/
│   └── Processed/
└── tests/
    ├── test_capture.py
    └── test_processing.py

Milestones

Version	Goal	Description
v0.1	CLI capture	Text input + file creation
v0.2	Voice capture	Whisper transcription
v0.3	AI processing	Summaries & tags
v0.4	Dashboard	Daily resurfacing
v1.0	GUI / Desktop	Streamlit or Tauri front-end

Contributing

• Use PEP 8 / Black formatting.
• Add docstrings for every function.
• Prefer pathlib.Path for filesystem interactions.
• Avoid magic constants where possible.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the LICENSE file included in the repository.