Point at exactly what you mean.
Pinpoint is a native macOS menu-bar app that captures your screen, lets you drop numbered markers on what matters, and copies a ready-to-paste prompt for your AI agent — an annotated image plus instructions that reference every marker.
Built with Swift / SwiftUI + ScreenCaptureKit. Free & open source.
🔗 pinpoint-ashy.vercel.app · Download the latest release
Why I built this
I pair-program with AI agents all day — Claude Code, Codex — and I kept hitting the same wall: paste a screenshot, then type a paragraph to explain which button or which misaligned icon I meant. Worse, most chat UIs keep only the image and silently drop the text you copied with it, so half my context never arrived.
Humans don't describe pixels to each other — we point. Pinpoint lets you do the same with an agent: drop a numbered marker on the thing, and it copies an annotated image plus a structured prompt that maps every marker to a position and a note. No more "the button in the corner — no, the other one."
I built it for myself and use it every day. It's open source because the problem isn't mine alone.
Download
- Grab the latest
Pinpoint.dmgfrom the releases page. - Open it and drag Pinpoint into your Applications folder.
- Launch it — it lives in your menu bar. Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.
On your first capture, macOS asks for Screen Recording permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording), then quit and relaunch Pinpoint once.
Requirements: macOS 15 or later · Apple Silicon & Intel.
Features
- Region capture — press ⌘⇧1 (rebindable) → the screen dims; drag a
rectangle (live dimensions,
Escto cancel). Native resolution, multi-display and Retina aware. A "capture full screen" fallback lives in the menu. - Numbered markers — click to drop ringed, numbered pins (drag to move, a note per marker). Add arrows and rectangles for emphasis.
- Three marker styles — filled disc, pointer pin, light outline — applied on screen and in the export.
- A prompt your agent can read — ⌘C copies the annotated PNG and a structured text: image size, each marker's description and position (in %), then your instructions. Parses cleanly in Claude Code, Codex, and the like.
- Legend baked in (optional) — embeds the marker descriptions + instructions into the image, so a single paste carries everything (most chat UIs drop the clipboard text).
- The shelf — a built-in library of your screenshots: browse, favorite, sort, rename, Quick Look, and reopen any capture with its annotations.
- Global shortcuts — capture or open the shelf from anywhere, fully rebindable.
- Bilingual — follows your macOS language (English / French).
- Native & private — SwiftUI + ScreenCaptureKit, living in your menu bar. Your captures never leave your Mac.
A copied prompt looks like this:
# Annotated capture — 1280×800 px
An image is attached. Numbered (ringed) badges point to specific elements.
Markers (position in % of the image, top-left origin):
1. Primary CTA button · ~62 % × 48 %
2. Misaligned icon · ~12 % × 22 %
## Instructions
Make the CTA full-width on mobile and fix the icon alignment.
Build from source
The project uses XcodeGen to generate the
.xcodeproj (not versioned).
brew install xcodegen # if needed xcodegen generate # creates Pinpoint.xcodeproj — run from the repo root open Pinpoint.xcodeproj
In Xcode:
- The signing Team is baked into
project.yml(DEVELOPMENT_TEAM), so signing stays stable acrossxcodegen generateruns. On another machine, replace it with your own (System Settings → your developer account, or the OU of your Apple Development certificate). - ⌘R to run.
- On the first capture, grant Screen Recording (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording), then relaunch the app.
To verify a build without any signing setup:
xcodegen generate && xcodebuild -scheme Pinpoint -destination 'platform=macOS' CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO build
The fixed
DEVELOPMENT_TEAM+ stable bundle id (app.croustibat.Pinpoint) let macOS remember the screen-recording grant between builds. If a permission gets stuck after an identity change:tccutil reset ScreenCapture app.croustibat.Pinpoint, then relaunch and re-grant.
Project structure
project.yml # XcodeGen config (deps, bundle id, LSUIElement, version…)
Pinpoint/
PinpointApp.swift # @main, Settings scene (Capture / Shelf tabs)
AppDelegate.swift # menu-bar status item + capture flow
RegionSelectionController.swift # multi-display overlay + coordinate resolution
RegionSelectionView.swift # dimming + rectangle + live dimensions
ScreenCapture.swift # ScreenCaptureKit: region (sourceRect) or full screen
CaptureRegion.swift # model: target display + rect (points, top-left) + scale
CaptureRecord.swift /
CaptureHistory.swift # recent captures (Application Support + JSON index)
EditorView.swift # annotation canvas + side panel
EditorWindowController.swift # AppKit window hosting the SwiftUI editor
Pin.swift / Markup.swift # marker + arrow/rectangle models
PinStyle.swift # marker styles (disc / pointer / outline)
Theme.swift # vermillon palette
Exporter.swift # annotated PNG render + structured text + clipboard
SettingsWindowController.swift # AppKit settings window (works around the macOS 14+ SettingsLink bug)
ShelfWindowController.swift # the shelf window
ScreenshotDetailWindowController.swift # detail window for a shelf item
Localizable.xcstrings # String Catalog (English base, French)
Shelf/ # the screenshot library (Models, Services, Stores, Views)
landing/ # the marketing site (Astro + Tailwind v4, bilingual)
Dependencies
- KeyboardShortcuts (Sindre Sorhus) — rebindable global shortcuts.
Release (notarized DMG)
The app icon is generated from the design system:
swift scripts/generate_icon.swift Pinpoint/Assets.xcassets/AppIcon.appiconset
A signed Developer ID build + notarization + DMG is produced by scripts/release.sh.
One-time setup — store the notarization credentials in a keychain profile:
xcrun notarytool store-credentials pinpoint-notary \ --apple-id "<your-apple-id>" --team-id MMJD6CLKNQ \ --password "<app-specific-password>" # appleid.apple.com → Sign-In & Security → App-Specific Passwords
then:
scripts/release.sh # → build/dist/Pinpoint.dmg (signed, notarized, stapled)License
MIT © 2026 Baptiste Bouillot