promptu

Compose LLM prompts from building blocks, right from the menubar!

The opposite of 'impromptu': composed, not off-the-cuff.

Usage

Press ⌥⌘P (the default hotkey) from any app, or click the menubar icon, to open promptu.

Press block keys to build the prompt while watching the live preview, then press RET. The composed prompt lands on the clipboard and focus returns to where you were, ready to paste.

The panel follows the system appearance by default: Catppuccin Latte in light mode, Nimbus in dark mode.

Install

With Homebrew:

brew install --cask mrcnski/tap/promptu

Or download Promptu-<version>.zip from Releases, unzip, and drag Promptu.app into /Applications.

Either way, the app is ad-hoc signed and not notarized, so macOS quarantines the download; clear the flag once:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Promptu.app

Or build from source (below). Locally built apps don't need the quarantine cleared.

Blocks

Blocks are customizable and are stored in ~/.config/promptu/blocks.json. On first launch, when the file doesn't exist, it is seeded with promptu's default block set. The file is an array of objects:

[
  { "key": "r", "desc": "review", "text": "review your changes" },
  { "key": "i", "desc": "investigate", "text": "investigate {link}", "placeholders": ["link"] },
  { "key": "P", "desc": "push", "text": "push when done", "negative": "don't push" }
]

{name} placeholders are prompted for when the block is added. Blocks are re-read on app restart.

Blocks can also be edited in-app: ⌘B opens the Block Editor. Click a block to change or delete it, or add a new one.

Presets

←/→ cycle between pages of blocks: blocks.json plus every other .json file in ~/.config/promptu/, one page per file. The Block Editor edits whichever page is showing.

Some preset pages are bundled: understand, build, ship, fix. These are adapted from the Claude Code prompt library. They are seeded once on first launch; delete a file to drop its page (it stays gone), or add your own .json to gain one.

History

By default, every prompt you copy is stored so you can reuse it again later. ⌘Y opens the history view.

A recalled prompt acts like a real composition again and its entries can be removed, reordered, and edited.

Note: The last 50 prompts are kept on your Mac, in plain text, including whatever you typed into placeholders. Settings has a "remember prompts" switch ("off" stops recording, but anything already stored stays until cleared in settings or the history view).

Build

make test      # run the core tests
make run       # run from the checkout
make dev       # auto-rebuild and relaunch on save (brew install watchexec)
make app       # build dist/Promptu.app (ad-hoc signed)
make install   # copy it to /Applications

Requires macOS 14+ and a Swift 6 toolchain (Xcode 16+).

Launch with open dist/Promptu.app from the checkout, or, once make install has run, launch "Promptu" from Spotlight or /Applications.

Apps run from the checkout skip the automatic login-item registration; use the settings toggle if you want one.

Todo

• Custom separator / negation prefix (fixed at "\n- " / "don't ")
• Universal (Intel + Apple Silicon) release binaries — needs full Xcode for swift build --arch arm64 --arch x86_64; releases are currently Apple Silicon only

See also

• The original Emacs package that started it all!

License

GPL-3.0