It recently dawned on me that, as a digital designer, I had yet to make a macOS or iOS app. So I wanted to give the former a try while also experimenting with a coding agent to bring it to life.
While it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the constant stream of AI tools and announcements, I think it’s enough to explore a couple properly and find your own way through the noise. Keeping up with the industry is one thing. Feeling pressured to try every new tool is another.
Anyway, for this project, my agent of choice was Codex. It felt like the logical option given my existing subscription to ChatGPT. So I ran with it, and it didn't disappoint. I vibed, nay, context engineered my way to a beautiful little Mac app in just a week.
Local Log is a minimal open-source journaling app that lets you record both text and video entries in one quiet, focused space, with everything stored locally on your Mac for privacy and simplicity. No accounts, no cloud dependency, no clutter — just a clean archive of your thoughts, searchable and always yours. With autosave, editable entry titles, keyboard shortcuts, and light and dark mode support, Local Log is designed to stay out of the way so you can get straight to logging.
Why a journaling app? I’ve always loved the notion of blogging and thinking in public, but there’s always been a layer of restraint to it. I wanted to create a digital space where you can be unapologetically honest with yourself. A private space to recalibrate, reflect, and reset. Where each entry becomes a small record of your mind that you can revisit whenever you like.
The design was inspired by the irreplaceable iA Writer and the open-source app Freewrite, which gave me the idea of adding vlogs. The typeface felt important to me, and I had no desire to offer multiple choices to the user. I made a decision and I stuck with it. And that font was Geist Mono by Vercel. And a shoutout to Manu for the clever app icon, which mirrors the UI itself.
You can view the GitHub repo and download directly for free.
