M3C Tools — macOS Menu Bar App

A native macOS menu bar app for capturing multimodal observations. Built in Go using caseymrm/menuet for the menu bar and native Cocoa (NSWindow, NSTabView) via cgo for the Observation Window.

Features

• Native macOS menu bar with custom icon
• 4 capture channels: YouTube, Screenshot, Impulse, Audio Import
• Unified Observation Window with 3 tabs: Record, Review, Tags
• Live VU meter with color-coded audio levels and dB readout
• Local Whisper transcription of voice recordings
• Multimodal ER1 uploads (image + audio + transcript)
• Offline retry queue with exponential backoff
• ER1 browser login linking (runtime context override)
• Transcript history (last 20 fetches)
• Draft saving on cancel (~/.m3c-tools/drafts/)
• Coordinated bulk ingestion lock + live progress for Audio Import/Re-process

Installation

Build and install

git clone https://github.com/kamir/m3c-tools.git
cd m3c-tools
make install

Build from source only

make build-app
# Result: build/M3C-Tools.app

Run without installing

make menubar

Capture Channels

Channel A — YouTube

1. Click Fetch Transcript… in the menu bar
2. Paste a YouTube URL or video ID
3. Transcript is fetched, thumbnail downloaded
4. Observation Window opens showing the thumbnail
5. Record a voice impression about the video
6. Review transcribed text, edit tags, Store or Cancel

Channel B — Screenshot

1. Click Capture Screenshot in the menu bar
2. Screen is captured (clipboard-first, falls back to interactive)
3. Observation Window opens showing the screenshot
4. Record your observations about what you see
5. Review, tag, Store or Cancel

Channel C — Quick Impulse

1. Click Quick Impulse in the menu bar
2. Interactive region selection appears
3. Capture a specific area of the screen
4. Observation Window opens
5. Record a quick voice note about the impulse
6. Review, tag, Store or Cancel

Channel D — Audio Import

1. Click Import Audio in the menu bar
2. Scans preconfigured folder (IMPORT_AUDIO_SOURCE) for audio files
3. Shows tracked/new/uploaded status for each file
4. Select files to import
5. Each file is transcribed via Whisper and uploaded to ER1

Bulk import/re-process UX

• Tracking DB window displays a live bulk progress strip:
  • determinate progress bar
  • current file + phase
  • success/failure counters
  • last error message
• Source table statuses are overlaid with in-flight states:
  • queued, importing, transcribing, uploading, done, failed, skipped
• Bulk buttons are disabled while a bulk session is active.
• During active bulk whisper/upload processing, other ingestion actions are blocked.

Observation Window

The Observation Window is a native NSWindow with NSTabView, shared by all capture channels:

Record Tab

• Captured image displayed (max 50% screen width/height)
• Live VU meter showing microphone input levels (green/yellow/red)
• Elapsed recording timer (MM:SS)
• Stop Recording button
• Window close (red X) = stop + “Keep this recording?” dialog

Review Tab

• Metadata header: video ID, language, snippet count, char count
• Scrollable transcript text (editable)
• Recording details: duration, file size, sample rate

Tags Tab

• Pre-filled tags per channel (editable comma-separated field)
• [Store] — upload to ER1 (queues on failure for retry)
• [Cancel] — save draft to ~/.m3c-tools/drafts/, return to idle

Menu Items

Item	Action
Status line	Current app state (Idle, Fetching, Recording…)
Fetch Transcript…	Channel A — YouTube
Capture Screenshot	Channel B — Screenshot
Quick Impulse	Channel C — Interactive region capture
Import Audio	Channel D — Batch audio import
Login to ER1…	Open ER1 login in Chrome
Logout from ER1	Clear runtime ER1 session
History submenu	Last 20 transcripts (click to re-copy)
Open Log File	Opens /tmp/m3c-tools.log
Mein Nutzerkonto	Opens ER1 profile page in Chrome

Logs

/tmp/m3c-tools.log

Structured log prefixes: [fetch], [cache], [store], [auth], [whisper], [recorder]

Bulk import/re-process lifecycle markers:

• [bulk][RUN_START]
• [bulk][ITEM_START]
• [bulk][PHASE]
• [bulk][ITEM_DONE]
• [bulk][RUN_DONE]

Uninstalling

make uninstall

Or manually:

rm -f /usr/local/bin/m3c-tools
rm -rf /Applications/M3C-Tools.app
# Data preserved at ~/.m3c-tools/ — remove manually if desired

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