Install
- Download the installer and run it. No administrator prompt.
- If SmartScreen warns, click More info → Run anyway. The app isn't code-signed yet.
- Leave "start when I sign in" ticked if you want it to watch without thinking about it.
First run
The window opens on a welcome page. It lists the supported games and shows that it is waiting for one. Start a game and play as usual. The app captures in the background at low priority, so the game keeps the machine.
Closing the window keeps it running in the tray. Quit from the tray icon's menu. Starting it a second time brings up the window of the copy already running, so there are never two captures.
Play in exclusive fullscreen, borderless or windowed; all three work. The game has to be in 16:9 with the English interface.
Recaps and your API key
The event log, stats, timeline, search and share card need no key. The written recap does: paste an OpenAI key (sk-…) in Settings. The default model is gpt-5.4-mini, and a recap costs a few cents per session.
To use Claude instead, add an Anthropic key and type a claude-* model name in Settings. Environment variables (OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, PREVIOUSLY_ON_MODEL) override Settings.
The recap is written when the game closes. If your latest session has no recap (no key at the time, say), Write it now on the home page writes it. What gets sent.
Using it
- Home tells you where you left off. After less than two days it is one line of stats. After up to two weeks it is a short recap, and after longer the full one.
- Sessions lists every session with its stats and recap.
- Timeline covers the whole playthrough: places, bosses and how many tries each took. Share card is there.
- Search finds any item, place, boss or NPC, and where you were when you met it.
Pick the game in the header when you play more than one.
A wrong or missing event
Every wrong event is a bug worth fixing, and there is no telemetry, so the only way we hear about one is from you. On the session's page, click Export for a bug report…. It saves the log and recap as a zip, with no frame, no key and no path. Then open an issue and attach the zip.
Troubleshooting
Nothing is logged
Check the tray tooltip: it should say it is capturing while the game runs. Run previously-on-cli.exe snapshot from the install folder while the game is on screen. It saves one frame and prints what each region reads.
Anything else
Run previously-on-cli.exe check. It tests OCR, capture and the window on your machine, and it prints the data folder, where the window's app.log lives. Paste both into an issue.
FAQ
Is it safe with anti-cheat?
It only reads the screen, the way a recording tool does. It never reads or changes game memory or files. It has run alongside Elden Ring's Easy Anti-Cheat without issue, but that is not a guarantee.
Does it slow the game down?
It runs at below-normal priority on two threads, and only reads text when a screen region changes. During heavy boss fights it works harder, since fire effects look a lot like text.
Console? Mac? Linux?
Live capture is Windows only, since the games are. The rest runs on Linux from source, including replaying a recording through the whole pipeline.
Will it log a new character separately?
Not yet: it can't tell a new character from the old one. Managing playthroughs is planned for when accounts arrive.