5. Quick Capture in PinSlip

5. Quick Capture

Another way to use PinSlip: a floating window on your screen, without opening the main window.
Great for: fleeting thoughts / copy-paste / webpage screenshots / collecting a day's ideas.
This chapter covers the shortcut, the floating window's behavior, save-target choices, and the browser extension.

5.1 Opening Quick Capture

Press the global shortcut:

Effect:

• A small floating window pops up

• Borderless / always on top / not resizable

• The cursor lands directly in the editor

5.2 Three Ways to Save

Clipboard Bring-In

When Quick Capture opens, PinSlip reads the plain text from your clipboard, pastes it in, and selects it all.

For example:

• You copy some web content → Quick Capture brings it in and selects it → Ctrl+Enter to capture it.

• You copy some code → Quick Capture brings it in → tweak, then press Enter.

You can turn this off in Settings → Quick Capture → Clipboard bring-in.

Pasting Images

• Ctrl+V (macOS Cmd+V) to paste an image directly.

• PinSlip auto-uploads it to attachments/ and shows a thumbnail strip beneath the editor.

• Paste multiple times to capture multiple images.

5.3 Save Target (Important)

Settings → Quick Capture → Save target decides where Quick Capture notes land:

Mode A: note (default)

Each thought becomes its own note, all stored in inbox/:

inbox/
  ├── one-line-thought-20260731-1502-abcd.md
  ├── idea-20260731-1505-efgh.md
  └── task-A-20260731-1509-ijkl.md

• Pros: each item is independent — easy to move, tag, or group later.

• Cons: inbox fills up fast if you have a lot of quick thoughts.

Mode B: daily (one note per day)

All thoughts get appended to a single note named "Quick Capture YYYY-MM-DD", with timestamped entries:

# Quick Capture 2026-07-31

### 14:02
Something I just thought of

### 14:05
Idea: split task X into two steps

### 14:09
Remind myself to reply to the client

New timestamps are appended to today's note; opening the window the next day creates a new note automatically.

Good for a "tidy up in the evening" workflow.

5.4 inbox Is a Special Status

• Quick Capture notes land in inbox/ (flat — no subfolders).

• They cluster at the top of the main window's List view.

• Move one to any subfolder under notes/ and it loses its inbox status (it won't be mixed back in).

That means:

• Quick Capture is not a permanent home.

• It's a temporary holding area for things you'll organize later.

• Once organized, the note enters the folder structure you've designed.

5.5 Browser Extension (Chrome / Firefox)

The store listing is being prepared; for now, side-load release/pinslip-extension-*.zip manually.
Side-load steps: unzip the file → browser extensions page → enable Developer mode → Load unpacked.

Once the extension is installed, you can clip web pages directly into PinSlip:

Popup Quick Capture

• Click the extension icon in the toolbar → a small yellow-themed window pops up.

• Title and URL are auto-filled (from the current page).

• The clipboard text is auto-prefilled.

• Behavior is identical to the Quick Capture floating window.

Context Menu

Right-click anywhere on a page and you'll see:

A green ✓ badge on success; a red ✗ badge on failure, which opens the options page to guide you.

Options Page

• Port setting: default 17639 (uses chrome.storage.sync to sync settings across devices).

• Reconnect probe: pings the desktop service to verify the connection.

• PinSlip desktop uses a random port by default, which may not match 17639 → if the first connection fails, change the port to whatever's in mcp.json.

Service Discovery

• The extension reads the port from chrome.storage.

• It connects directly to 127.0.0.1:<port>/api/notes/quick.

• Shares the same port as the desktop MCP (/mcp and /api are served from the same process).

5.6 Classic Combos: Quick Capture + Browser Extension