Tempo — I'm building a Mac app that puts every event from every tool into one timeline

Software
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Hey MPU,

I’ve been a long-time lurker and occasional poster here, and this community has shaped a lot of how I think about Mac workflows. So this feels like the right place to share something I’ve been building.

The problem I kept running into:

I use Apple Calendar, Todoist, GitHub, Grafana, and a handful of scripts and backup tools. Each one has its own notification, its own window, its own rhythm. By the time something needs my attention — a server alert, a PR, a backup failure — I’ve already lost context switching between apps.

I wanted one place to see everything.

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What I built:

Tempo is a native Mac app that aggregates events from all your tools into a single chronological timeline, and surfaces contextual actions for each one.

A few examples of what that looks like in practice:

  • A Grafana alert fires → Tempo shows it in the timeline with SSH, Ping, and Open Dashboard buttons already there
  • A task is due today in Todoist, OmniFocus, or Things 3 → it appears in the timeline with a direct “open in app” action
  • A client meeting starts in 10 minutes → your Obsidian notes and relevant documents appear alongside the calendar event
  • A GitHub PR needs review → it shows up with a direct Open PR action
  • A Kopia backup completes (or fails) → it’s logged in the feed with Browse snapshot and View logs

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The actions use URL schemes and terminal commands — so obsidian://open?vault=..., ssh://..., things:///add?... all work natively. If the app supports it, Tempo can trigger it.

Tempo is also fully themeable. Because your timeline should look the way you want it to.

The extensibility part (for those who like to tinker):

Any tool that can send a POST request already works with Tempo — no plugin, no SDK needed. You define the payload, Tempo renders it with whatever actions you configure.

This means shell scripts, cron jobs, custom automations — anything you already run on your Mac can post an event to Tempo with a single curl.

Tools that don’t support webhooks natively — like OmniFocus or Things 3 — can be connected as sources using a short AppleScript or JXA automation. Because Tempo runs entirely on your Mac, there’s no rate limiting or API overhead: your local apps become first-class sources. OmniFocus in particular exposes its entire data model via AppleScript — tasks, projects, tags, due dates, defer dates — so the integration can be as deep as you want it to be.

What’s coming:

  • Action Builder — a visual editor to create custom buttons and commands for any event type
  • CLI — a full terminal interface: push events, query the timeline, manage sources, trigger actions
  • AI Action Builder — describe what you want in plain English, Tempo generates the action (BYOK)
  • Template gallery — share and import community setups

Privacy: no account, no cloud, no telemetry. Everything lives in a local SQLite database on your Mac.

I’m building this solo. Private beta is coming — if this sounds like something you’d use, I’d love to have you on the waitlist. There’s also a short 2-question survey to help me figure out what to build first.

:point_right: tempoapp.app

Happy to answer questions, hear what integrations would matter most to you, or just talk through the workflow problems this is trying to solve.

7 Likes
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Looks like good progress; it’s a problem every builder wants to tilt at some time in their life. :slight_smile:

Thinking of this as an alternative to Meeter: are you doing a menu bar integration, and how would you help a user prioritize between meetings, deadlines and critical alerts?

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Thanks! The Meeter comparison is apt — Tempo overlaps on the “meeting coming up, here’s the join link” use case, but it goes quite a bit further.

On menu bar: yes, that’s planned from day one. The idea is a compact view showing what’s next and any active alerts, without having to open the full app.

On prioritization: the timeline has two distinct zones — a structured agenda above (meetings, deadlines) and a reactive live feed below (alerts, script results,
backup completions). Each event in the feed carries a severity level — critical, warning, info, ok — which controls the visual weight and will eventually drive
notification behavior. The feed will also be sortable by date or priority, so you can choose whether to see the most recent event or the most critical one first. So
a critical server alert and an upcoming meeting can coexist in the same view without competing for attention in the same way.

The app is actively in development — feedback and ideas from people who actually live in these workflows are genuinely welcome.

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With or without AI?

Is the calendar integration supporting CalDAV? (For Fastmail users)

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Both, in a way. I’m a Unix sysadmin with a practical background in scripting and automation. Tempo started as a personal necessity — I got tired of juggling too many
tools with no single place to see what was happening. I’ve been building it leaning heavily on AI tools, which made it possible for someone with my background to
work at this level. I think that’s worth being upfront about, and honestly it feels fitting: a tool built with AI assistance, with an AI Action Builder on the
roadmap.

On CalDAV — yes, absolutely. CalDAV is the primary calendar integration from day one, precisely because it covers Fastmail, Nextcloud, iCloud, and self-hosted setups
without requiring proprietary OAuth flows. If you’re on Fastmail, it should just work.

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Like Tapestry, but for work.

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I’m in the category of curious and yet unsure if I have a need. I don’t have a normal work timeline. I look forward to seeing a video where I will be able to say, hell yes or not for me.

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That’s a great way to put it — Tapestry was actually one of the inspirations for the unified timeline approach. The difference is that Tempo’s sources are tools and
systems rather than social feeds, and every event comes with actions attached.

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That’s honest and useful feedback, thank you. A proper demo video is coming — it’s on the short list precisely for people like you who want to see it in context
before deciding.

I understand the hesitation — I tend to use only what I actually need, without redundancy. Tempo addresses a specific need: not adding another tool to the pile, but
replacing the mental overhead of switching between them. Whether that resonates depends entirely on your workflow, and I’m happy to tell you honestly if it would add
anything for you or not.

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Two things that probably matter most if you’re trying to decide whether this is for you:

First, it aggregates events from all your tools into one timeline — calendar, tasks, alerts, scripts, whatever. That part is fairly straightforward.

The more interesting bit, at least to me, is the actions layer. Every event type gets a set of actions you define yourself — URL schemes, terminal commands, scripts.
A Grafana alert, for example, should surface the most appropriate tools to check and react: a terminal with a ready-to-go SSH command, or a ping, seem like obvious
choices. But those are just templates we’re thinking of shipping as defaults — you can customize or replace any action to fit your own workflow.

The Action Builder is a visual editor for defining all of this, no code needed. Any tool that speaks HTTP or can be scripted via AppleScript qualifies as a source.

Happy to answer questions while I finish the video.