Shakespeare

Shakespeare is a free, open-source Mac menu bar app by andrea saez. In a Medium post, the author says she built it with Claude Code in the free time between two jobs, and the title jokingly calls it entirely useless. It only counts how many keys you press each day, turns your typing into badges named after Shakespeare plays, and measures your keystrokes against landmarks such as the Tower of London and the Great Wall. The README says it counts key presses, never what you type, and never touches the network, storing daily counts in a file on your Mac; with the optional "Top apps" feature on, it also records app names. The post spends time explaining why it isn't a keylogger. What sets it apart is that a toy project becomes a clear look at how a vibe-coded tool should handle privacy.

Who it's for:Mac users curious about how much they type who enjoy playful stats, and anyone interested in how vibe coding deals with privacy.

Before you start: macOS 14 or later, and it installs from source only: install the Xcode Command Line Tools, clone the repo and run make install; it builds for Apple Silicon and Intel. You must grant it Input Monitoring in System Settings, and the author herself notes this is the same permission a keylogger would ask for. "Counts but never records" is the author's and the README's claim; we haven't reviewed the code. The license is MIT, the repo has two commits, and the author says she isn't accepting pull requests.

Based on the author's Medium post and GitHub README. Not tested by AI Inspiration World.