Build your own sticky-note to-do lists for your Mac

What this actually is

Sticky notes that float on your desktop, with Apple Notes-style tick-off checklists inside them — and a little alien sitting on the corner of each one who jumps up and reminds you about anything you haven't done.

It's the bit between the two Apple apps. Stickies float but can't do checklists. Notes do checklists but live in a window you have to go and open. This does both, in seven colourways, with eight different aliens.

Things it does that I use constantly:

• Paste a list in and it splits itself up. Copy a bulleted list out of a chat, a doc or an email, press ⌘V, and every bullet becomes its own tickable row. Unbulleted lines in between become section headings, so one note can hold three separate lists.
• Sections. A single note can be "Client work / Content / Admin" with its own checklist under each.
• The nudge. Set how often a note should chase you — every 15 minutes, hourly, once a day — and when it's due, that note's alien bounds into the middle of your screen holding your list up, and you tick things off without even opening the note. Finished notes never nudge you.
• Closing isn't deleting. The ✕ puts a note away; it stays listed in the menu bar and comes back exactly as it was.

No account, no login, no API key. Everything stays on your Mac, in a plain file you can open and read.

What you need before you start

Three things, and only one of them costs money:

1. A Mac running macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer. Apple menu → About This Mac.
2. Claude Code, on a paid Claude plan. This is the part that costs.
3. Apple's build tools. A one-line install, and Claude walks you through it.

No developer account, no App Store, no Apple fee — because you're building it yourself.

Step 1 — Get Claude Code on your Mac

Skip this if you've already got it.

1. Go to claude.ai/code and follow the install instructions for Mac.
2. Sign in with your Claude account.
3. Open Terminal (press ⌘ Space, type "Terminal", press Return), type claude and press Return. If it starts talking to you, you're in.

Step 2 — Download the code

Download To Do Lists by Incuv8or (1.1 MB)

1. Double-click the zip to unzip it. You'll get a folder.
2. Move it somewhere sensible — Documents is fine. Not Downloads, because you'll want it again if you ever rebuild.

Step 3 — Point Claude Code at the folder

1. In Terminal, type cd (with a space) — don't press Return yet.
2. Drag the folder from Finder onto the Terminal window. It fills in the path.
3. Press Return.
4. Type claude and press Return.

Step 4 — Paste this in

Copy the whole block below and paste it into Claude Code.

I've downloaded a folder of Swift source code for a small Mac app called To Do Lists by
Incuv8or. It's like Apple Stickies crossed with Notes checklists: coloured notes that float
on my desktop, with tick-off checklists and a little alien sitting on the corner of each one
who jumps up to remind me about anything I haven't done. Please build it and get it running.

I am not a developer. Explain what you're doing in plain English, don't assume I know the
technical words, and if something fails, diagnose it and tell me exactly what to click.

Please do this in order:

1. Check my Mac can build it. It needs macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer — run
   `sw_vers -productVersion` and tell me if I'm too old. Then run `swift --version`. If that
   fails, tell me to run `xcode-select --install`, wait for the download, then carry on.
   Don't make me install the whole of Xcode unless the build actually fails without it.

2. Build it. From inside the folder, run ./scripts/build-app.sh. If it errors, read the
   error and fix it — don't just hand me the error message.

3. Open the app. It's in the build folder, called "To Do Lists by Incuv8or.app". There's no
   Dock icon — it's a small flying saucer in the menu bar at the top right of my screen.

4. Make my first note with me. Tell me to press Control-Option-Command-N, then walk me
   through: typing a title then pressing Return to start the checklist; Return at the end of
   a line to make the next item; clicking a circle to tick something off; clicking the small
   coloured dot to change the note's colour; clicking the alien to pick a different
   character and colour; and "Add section" to put subtitles inside one note.

5. Show me the paste trick. Tell me to copy a bulleted list from anywhere and press
   Command-V on a note. It should split into separate checklist rows, and any unbulleted
   lines between the bullets become section headings.

6. Show me the right-click menu on a note: keep it floating or not, collapse it, minimise
   it, and "Nudge Me" to set how often the alien reminds me about that note. Then use
   "Nudge Me Now" from the menu bar so I can see what a nudge actually looks like.

7. Explain closing versus deleting. The X closes a note but keeps it — it stays listed in
   the menu bar under "Your Notes" and clicking it there brings it back. Deleting is a
   separate thing in the right-click menu, and it asks first.

8. Offer to turn on "Open at Login" from the menu bar so my notes come back after a restart.

If I ask you to change how it looks, the note colours live in Sources/StickyDeck/Theme.swift,
the alien characters in Sources/StickyDeck/AlienStyle.swift, and the reminder card in
Sources/StickyDeck/NudgeOverlay.swift. Change them, rebuild, and show me.

If something fails, tell Claude what happened rather than giving up. Reading its own errors is the thing it's best at.

Step 5 — Make your first list

Look for the flying saucer in your menu bar, top right.

Press Control-Option-Command-N to make a note, then:

• Type a title, press Return, and you're in the checklist.
• Return at the end of a line makes the next item — same as Notes.
• Click a circle to tick something off. It fills in and the text gets a line through it.
• ⌘V a bulleted list and watch it split itself into rows.
• Click the small coloured dot (top left) to change the note's colour.
• Click the alien to pick a different character and colour. There are eight.
• Add section at the bottom for subtitles inside the note.

Step 6 — Set up the nudge

This is the good bit, so don't skip it.

Right-click a note → Nudge Me → pick an interval. A small bell appears in the note's header so you can see which notes are armed.

Then menu bar → Nudge Me Now to watch what happens: the alien from that note bounds into the middle of your screen at full size holding your list, with the outstanding items listed and a circle beside each one you can tick straight from there.

Three things it deliberately won't do:

• It won't nudge you about a note where everything's ticked.
• It won't nudge you from every note at once — only the one that's due.
• It won't steal focus from whatever you're typing in.

Step 7 — The rest of the right-click menu

Item	What it does
Keep Floating	On, the note sits above your other windows. Off, it can go behind your work. Per note.
Collapse	Folds the note down to a title-only strip, alien included.
Minimise to Dock	Sends it to the Dock like any other window.
Note Colour	Seven colourways.
Add Section	A subtitle inside the note.
Close Note	Puts it away, keeps it.
Delete Note…	Destroys it. Asks first.

In the menu bar, every note is listed by title with its progress, ticked if it's on screen. Click any of them to bring it back — that's how you reopen a note you closed.

Where your notes actually live

~/.config/mission-control-stickies/notes.json — a plain text file you can open and read. Menu bar → Reveal Notes in Finder opens the folder.

It keeps two layers of backup, written before every save: the version immediately before the last one, and one snapshot per day for the last fortnight, in a backups folder. I added that the hard way, after losing a day of my own notes. To roll back, quit the app, copy the backup over notes.json, and reopen.

Making it yours

Ask Claude to change it. This is the part worth doing:

• "Make these my brand colours" — the seven colourways are in one file. Give Claude your hex codes, or tell it to pull them off your website.
• "Make the alien bigger" / "Add a ninth alien with a hat"
• "Change the reminder wording"
• "Make new notes always open in the top-left"

A dozen small files, all commented. If you break something, delete the folder and unzip it again.

If something goes wrong

"The checkbox didn't tick." Click it once — it should register the first time. If not, tell Claude.

"⌘V pasted everything as one item." That happens when the text has no line breaks. Bulleted lists split; a single paragraph goes in as one row.

"I closed a note and can't find it." Menu bar → Your Notes → click it. Closing never deletes.

"The build failed." Paste the error to Claude and ask it to fix it.

Licence, plainly

Yours to use and to change as much as you like. Not yours to resell. If you make something good with it, I'd love to see it.