Show IH: Your Mac has no place for temporary things. So I built one.

Where do you put temporary things?

Not the stuff worth filing. The stuff still in motion. A link you need in ten minutes. A color from a design. A prompt you'll reuse.

I'd never even thought about the question. Turns out I was answering it badly a hundred times a day.

The problem
I set out to build my first app. That meant living across AI tools, Figma, and Chrome. Prompting constantly. Copying constantly. And losing things constantly. I'd dump them in Notes, or flick back through apps hoping to find them again.

Somewhere in there it clicked: modern work doesn't happen in one app anymore. It happens in the space between apps. (HBR clocked it: about 1,200 app switches a day.) And AI turned this up. Every good prompt needs the right context pulled from somewhere else. You're not just doing the work now. You're carrying it between tools.

Your Mac gives you one slot for that: the clipboard. One copy, the next copy kills it. Notes wants to keep things forever. Folders want them filed. Nothing is built for the in-between.

What I built
Tansei. A quiet shelf in your menu bar. You copy, it lands there. Text, links, images, files, colors, code. Pin what you reach for. Drag it back in when you need it. Clear it when the work ships.

All local. No account. No subscription. Pay once, 3-day free trial. macOS 15+.

The funny part: I started out building a different app. The real problem was staring at me the whole time.

🚀 Live on Product Hunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/products/tansei-a-simple-shelf-for-your-mac

🔗 Website→ tansei.io

Where do your temporary things live right now?