I Built a Mac Menu Bar App Because I Kept Saying "Wait, What?" in Every Meeting

<p>Every "build in public" thread and every YouTube growth guru tells you the same thing: pick the smallest possible surface, ship the lowest-effort thing that gets the biggest

<p><em>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week3-2026-10-19">Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 3: Slow and Steady</a></em></p>

<p>I have a confession: I'm a productivity app addict.</p> <p>Notion, Todoist, Things, TickTick, Bear, Obsidian — I've tried them all. And every single one failed me in the same

<p>Let's be real: the current AI coding workflow is tedious. </p> <p>You hit a bug. You copy your code. You tab out to ChatGPT/Claude. You paste it. You copy the fix. You paste it

<p>Most productivity apps are built by teams of 20, funded by millions in venture capital, and still manage to feel like they were designed by a committee that's never actually

<p>As a solo developer, the biggest bottleneck isn't usually the ideas—it's the time required to execution. Recently, I wanted to launch a suite of free web tools for developers

<ul> <li><p>OhNine is a free menu bar app that tracks Claude session and weekly usage limits in real time</p></li> <li><p>It sends native alerts at 80%, 91%, and 100% so a session

<p>Every Monday I'd sit down for our team sync and draw a blank.</p> <p>What did I actually work on last week? How many hours did I put in? Was I in flow or just firefighting?</p>