ClipStream

!!! AI agent–generated app; no manual coding involved. !!!

Windows clipboard manager with stream-based history, plugin pipeline, and Markdown export.

Features

Clipboard monitoring

• Win32 AddClipboardFormatListener / WM_CLIPBOARDUPDATE on a hidden host window
• 100 ms debounce and sequence-number dedup
• Sticky own-write suppress: own SetDataObject updates are ignored by sequence after write
• Privacy filter skips password-manager / exclude formats (Clipboard Viewer Ignore, ExcludeClipboardContentFromMonitorProcessing, zeroed CanIncludeInClipboardHistory / CanUploadToCloudClipboard)
• Source process from GetClipboardOwner (fallback: foreground window)

Capture and plugins

• Raw multi-format capture with OpenClipboard retries
• Plugin pipeline: first matching format plugin by priority, then enrichers
• Built-in formats: text, HTML, image, files, generic binary fallback
• Content-hash (SHA-256) deduplication before save

Streams and routing

• Named streams with icons; default inbox stream
• Drag-and-drop fragments between streams
• Routing engine (regex / kind / source process / format rules) — persisted in SQLite; no rule editor UI yet (without rules everything goes to inbox)

UI

• Main window: streams list + fragment list (kind, title, preview, time)
• Tray icon: show / exit; minimize hides to tray
• Dark / light theme (persisted in settings)
• Context actions: paste to active window, export to folder
• Editable fragment titles

Paste

• Rebuild clipboard payloads from blob store
• Paste to last external foreground window (activate + Ctrl+V)

Export

• Export fragment or stream to a folder as Markdown with YAML frontmatter
• Optional attachments under attachments/ (content-addressed copies)
• Filename from title slug with uniqueness suffixes

Build

dotnet build ClipStream.sln
dotnet test ClipStream.sln
dotnet run --project src/ClipStream.App

Release

Push a version tag to publish a self-contained Windows build to GitHub Releases:

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

The Release workflow runs tests, publishes win-x64 (self-contained single-file), zips the output, and attaches it to a new GitHub Release.

Architecture

Project	Role
ClipStream.App	WPF UI, tray, clipboard host window, themes
ClipStream.Core	Domain models and service contracts
ClipStream.Clipboard	Win32 listener, capture, privacy filter, paste
ClipStream.Infrastructure	SQLite, blob store, plugin loader, routing
ClipStream.Export	Markdown directory exporter
ClipStream.Mcp	Embedded HTTP MCP server (Streamable HTTP)
ClipStream.Plugins.Abstractions	Plugin contracts
ClipStream.Plugins.BuiltIn	Format plugins and paste/export actions

Data

Path	Contents
%AppData%/ClipStream/clipstream.db	SQLite (streams, fragments, payloads, routing rules)
%AppData%/ClipStream/blobs/	Content-addressed binary payloads
%AppData%/ClipStream/settings.json	UI settings (theme) and MCP (Enabled, Port, Secret)
%AppData%/ClipStream/plugins/*.dll	User plugins

MCP server

While ClipStream is running it can expose a local Model Context Protocol server over Streamable HTTP:

• URL: http://127.0.0.1:17890/mcp (loopback only)
• Auth: Authorization: Bearer <secret> (or X-ClipStream-Secret)
• Secret is generated on first launch and stored in settings.json
• Tray menu: enable/disable MCP, copy client config, rotate secret

Example Cursor / MCP client config (also available via Copy MCP config in the tray):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clipstream": {
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:17890/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <secret-from-settings>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Tools cover listing/creating/updating/deleting streams and clips (text clips). Paste and Markdown export are not exposed via MCP yet.

Plugins

Built-in plugins are registered via DI. Custom DLLs implementing IClipStreamPlugin can be placed in %AppData%/ClipStream/plugins/.

See Plugin API for interfaces, loading rules, and examples (format, enricher, fragment/stream actions).