harness vs screenpipe
Screenpipe is memory infrastructure. Install it (a Rust-core desktop app from Mediar, with around 20k GitHub stars from its open-source years) and it records your whole computer 24/7: every app on every monitor, plus microphone and app audio, transcribed locally with speaker labels. Everything lands in a local SQLite database, and a local API plus an MCP server let Claude, Cursor, or your own agents query what you've seen. The positioning is exactly that: record everything, plug it into your agents.
Harness ships the assistant and skips the recorder. It runs in the browser with nothing to install: you share a tab the way you would on any video call, the reading happens on your device, and capture ends the moment you stop sharing. Both tools keep your data local; they part ways on scope and consent. Screenpipe captures everything by default and you carve out exclusions. Harness captures nothing until you hand it a tab.
side by side
| harness | screenpipe | |
|---|---|---|
| runs on | any chromium browser (chrome, brave, arc, edge), no install | native desktop app (rust core); a background recorder you install and keep running |
| screen reading happens | on your device; a question sends only a focused slice of the relevant region | on your device: accessibility-tree text first, OCR fallback, local whisper for audio |
| what it sees | the tab, window, or screen you explicitly share | everything, 24/7: all apps and monitors plus mic and app audio, minus apps and sites you exclude |
| watching over time | yes: watches and flags the moment it happens, keeps working after you close the window | the recorder always runs; automations ("pipes") execute on a schedule rather than firing the moment a condition hits |
| memory of your screen | on-device searchable visual memory plus learned preferences, wipeable | local sqlite history, roughly 20GB of media a month at defaults, media kept 14 days by default; queryable over a local api and mcp |
| acting on it | yes: drafts, documents, spreadsheets, decks, images | no assistant included; you wire the history into claude, cursor, or your own agents |
| pricing | free tier; pay-as-you-go credit; resident $7.99/mo | free for personal, nonprofit, and educational use since the june 2026 license change; commercial use is paid: $25/mo standard, $50/seat/mo pro, $150/seat/mo enterprise |
pick screenpipe if
- you want everything you did on your computer captured and searchable, in every app, not just a shared tab
- you already run agents (claude, cursor, your own) and want to feed them your screen history over an api or mcp server
- audio matters across all apps: meeting capture, mic and system audio, local transcripts with speaker labels
pick harness if
- you want the assistant included: ask about the screen, leave a watch that fires the moment something changes, get documents and spreadsheets out, with nothing to wire together
- you want capture you consent to share by share, that stops when you stop, instead of a recorder running all day
- you don't want to install a background daemon or hold ~20GB a month of screen recordings
New to the category? Start with what is screen-aware AI? or see the full 2026 roundup. Harness is free to try, in the browser, no install: tryharness.ai.