slack face journal

a bot that captures my face at the exact moment of reading slack messages.

demo

demo.mp4

it watches slack's dock badge, and the instant the badge gets louder (a new dot, or the unread count going up) it snaps your webcam with the real time burned in. at the end of the day you get a grid of your emotional decline, a timelapse, and a neon terminal cut with a sentiment tracker.

macOS only. no slack app, no tokens, no admin: it reads the dock badge.

setup

pip install opencv-python numpy pillow

you also need ffmpeg on your PATH for the video outputs.

run it

python3 watch_slack.py

leave it running all day. every slack notification gets you:

• a frame in frames/ with the actual time burned in bottom-left
• a line in journal_log.json with the time and (best effort) who it was from

the camera stays open the whole time so the capture is instant. that means the camera light is on all day. that is the price of art.

then build the outputs:

python3 stitch_journal.py   # journal_grid.jpg (the grid) + journal.mp4 (timelapse)
python3 make_edit.py        # journal_edit.mp4 (typewriter intro + sentiment tracker)

permissions

• camera: macOS will prompt the first time. required.
• full disk access (optional): grants the watcher read access to the macOS notification store so the "from:" line shows the real sender name from the slack notification. without it, senders log as "unknown" and everything else still works. System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access > add your terminal app.

the sentiment tracker

make_edit.py gives every capture a sentiment percentage and label in neon green. by default it is a slow decline across the day, because that is accurate. to override any shot, edit journal_log.json:

{
  "file": "frames/2026-08-29_14-52-10.jpg",
  "time": "2:52 PM",
  "sender": "my boss",
  "sentiment": 11,
  "label": "suppressed rage"
}

how the trigger works

lsappinfo info -only StatusLabel Slack returns slack's dock badge: empty (quiet), a dot (unread activity), or a number (mentions and DMs). the watcher polls it twice a second and snaps when the badge escalates. reading the message resets the badge, so the next message triggers again.

it will not fire once per message inside a burst that arrives before you look, and it cannot see messages while you have slack focused and read them instantly. it captures the moments that matter: the ones where slack interrupted you.