Spool

A local-only clipboard manager built around spools — named, ordered lists of clips that you wind on by copying and play off one at a time, or all at once, in the order you arranged them.

Nothing it captures can leave the machine, and that property is enforced by the build rather than by good intentions. See PLAN.md for the specification this is built against.

Electron + React + TypeScript. Windows first.

Get it

Spool is on the Microsoft Store as Spool Clipboard — the name "Spool" was already taken as a Store name; everything inside the app still says Spool.

Get it from the Microsoft Store · Store ID 9N7J7LM83RM5 · version 0.1.0 · free · Windows 10/11

There is no auto-updater, on purpose (see below), so new versions are new Store releases. The privacy policy is PRIVACY.md: what the app stores, where, what it never does, and what you control.

Development

npm install
npm run dev        # launch the app with hot reload
npm test           # Vitest over the pure modules
npm run lint       # ESLint
npm run check:network  # the zero-network gate — fails the build on any way out
npm run typecheck  # tsc over main/preload and renderer
npm run build      # bundle main, preload, and renderer into out/

Summon the compact window with Win + Alt + V or Win + Alt + C. Closing the window hides it to the tray; quitting is explicit from the tray menu.

The zero-network guarantee

Spool has no network features, and that is checked rather than promised. npm run check:network fails the build on a networking API anywhere in src/, on a banned dependency, and on any change to the production dependency tree that is not reflected in deps-snapshot.json. At runtime the main process revokes fetch, http, https, net, and dgram before anything else runs, the session cancels every request that is not reading local bytes, and the renderer ships a CSP with no remote origin.

There is deliberately no auto-updater — an updater is network code, and it would void all of the above. Updates are manual downloads.

Building

The clipboard listener is a native addon, so a first install compiles it. On Windows that needs Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ workload and a Windows SDK; npm install runs node-gyp for you once they are there. Keep the checkout path short — building native modules from a deeply nested directory fails on Windows' 260-character path limit.

Status

Published. Version 0.1.0 passed Microsoft Store certification in September 2026 and is listed as Spool Clipboard. What shipped is M0–M13 below, plus the Store work: a runFullTrust justification for the Win32 clipboard, hotkey and paste APIs, the MSIX package built from the reserved identity, and the listing itself. See STORE.md for the listing copy.

M12 — the capacity floor: at 95% Spool stops accepting new copies and says so in the tray, offering the largest spools first, Pause capture, or Reset everything. It suspends capture and nothing else — every clip you already have stays readable, servable, and reorderable throughout — and capture resumes the moment enough space is free, with no restart. No starred spool is ever listed, and nothing asks you to unstar one.

Underneath, M11 — starred spools: a star marks a spool you mean to keep. Starred spools sort to the top, survive Clear spools, and are never proposed when space runs short — no capacity state ever asks for a star back. Because that promise is unconditional, starring is capped at five and at half the store, and a star that would breach either is refused up front rather than revoked later.

Underneath, M10 — the capacity advisor: when the store approaches its 512 MB budget, Spool offers a list of spools you have finished with — oldest used first, never the default or the one you are working in — with sizes, a running total of what deleting them frees, and a Not now that means it. Nothing is ever deleted that you did not check. The same figures live permanently in Settings under Storage.

Underneath, M9 — retention and control: an optional per-spool age limit, a settings panel listing every standing answer with a way to revoke it, a configurable consent timeout, the caps shown read-only, and Reset everything — a failsafe that deletes the store, the sealed key, and the preferences without reading any of them, then restarts. Underneath are M8's spool management, M7's arranging and whole-spool paste, M6's encrypted store, M5's consent prompts, M4's serve, M3's capture, M2's spool core, M1's zero-network gate, and M0's tray icon and summon hotkey.