Think now, organize later.
Capture raw developer thoughts instantly from your terminal. Review them when enough signal exists. Leave with a concrete next-actions file.
Your best ideas shouldn't
turn into backlog fog.
Developers have scattered thoughts all day. dump is built to catch them quickly, review them at the right moment, and turn them into current next steps.
Instant capture
Type a thought, it's saved. No API call, no spinner. Your flow state stays intact.
Review when ready
AI reviews pending thoughts together and turns them into a short current action list.
Voice capture
Press Space to speak. Transcribed locally on your Mac. No audio leaves your device.
Local and private
Everything on your machine. Thoughts never leave until you explicitly ask for analysis.
Concrete output
Every review writes a durable action file in your repo or home dump directory.
Secondary reviews
Use /weekly, /standup, and /focus when you want patterns, updates, or a deeper pass.
Four steps. One useful loop.
Capture
Type or speak whatever is on your mind. Raw, messy, unformatted. Saved instantly.
Accumulate signal
Keep going until you have a few unreviewed thoughts. dump nudges you at 3 and 5, but never auto-runs AI.
Review
Type /review and AI turns pending thoughts into what matters now, next actions, later, and watchouts.
Act
dump writes .dump/next-actions.md so you leave review with something concrete to work from.
Up and running in 60 seconds.
Install
Requires Node.js 22+
Set an API key
Pick any one provider. Saved once, used forever.
$ echo 'ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...' > ~/.dump/.env
# or OpenAI
$ echo 'OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...' > ~/.dump/.env
# or Google
$ echo 'GEMINI_API_KEY=AI...' > ~/.dump/.env copy
Run
Capture, review, then inspect the saved next-actions file.
$ dump review
$ dump actions copy
Voice mode optional
macOS only. Press Space to speak instead of type. Transcription is fully local.
Start with three commands.
Use the rest when needed.
Type / for autocomplete with arrow key navigation
Works with any provider.
Set one API key. Auto-detected. No configuration.
Common questions.
Why not just use an AI chatbot?
Chatbots are great when you want answers. dump is for when you want to think. You're not going to open a browser, navigate to a chatbot, and type "maybe the cache is stale" — that thought is too small, too raw. So it vanishes. dump captures what you'd never bother telling a chatbot. And when you have 20 of those thoughts, analyzing them together reveals patterns and connections you'd never see one at a time.
Is my data private?
Yes. All thoughts are stored locally on your machine at ~/.dump/. Nothing leaves your device until you explicitly run /review, /weekly, or another AI command. Voice transcription happens entirely on your Mac using Apple's built-in speech recognition — no audio is sent anywhere.
Do I need to pay for dump?
dump itself is free. You bring your own API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google for the AI review features (/review, /weekly, /standup, etc.). Thought capture, search, export, and everything else works without any API key at all.
Does it work without an API key?
Yes — partially. Capturing thoughts, searching, pinning, exporting, and browsing history all work without any API key. You only need a key when you want AI review (/review, /weekly, /standup, /compare, /focus). dump will tell you how to set one up.
What happens to my thoughts?
They're stored as a JSON file at ~/.dump/thoughts.json on your machine. You own them completely. You can export them as Markdown or JSON anytime with /export. Pinned thoughts survive /clear. Nothing is synced, uploaded, or shared unless you choose to.
Stop storing thoughts.
Start leaving with actions.
Install in 10 seconds. Capture fast. Review when ready.
Install from npm