ContextSwitch Is Now Free

Quick one today: ContextSwitch is now free on the Mac App Store.

What Is ContextSwitch?

For anyone who hasn’t been following along, ContextSwitch is a native macOS kanban board designed for coordinating AI coding agents. The core idea: you drop a todo.db SQLite database in your project repo, and every agent you use (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, whatever) can read and write to the same task list through MCP.

I built it last summer because I was frustrated with context loss. You’d spend an hour getting Claude Code set up on a complex project, switch over to Cursor to try a new model, and suddenly you’re re-explaining the entire plan from scratch. ContextSwitch gave all the agents a shared state: what needs doing, what’s in progress, what’s blocked, what decisions have been made.

It also has a diary feature that hooks into Claude Code to automatically journal what happened during each coding session. Decisions, progress, blockers, all logged to the same database.

The app supports multiple databases simultaneously, has a timeline view, global search, drag-and-drop between projects, and a proper native macOS UI. The built-in MCP server means agents can list tasks, create new ones, mark things done, track dependencies, and search your backlog through natural language.

Why Free?

Here’s the honest answer: I don’t really use it much anymore.

When I originally built ContextSwitch in the summer of 2025, the models needed a lot more help staying on track. Long coding sessions would drift. Agents would lose the thread on complex multi-step tasks. Having an external task database that the agent could check in with was genuinely necessary to keep things from going sideways.

But the models have gotten quite good at this. Claude, in particular, has gotten dramatically better at maintaining context over long sessions and managing its own task state internally. I still think the project diary concept is valuable, and I know the kanban view is nice for humans who want to see what’s going on, but the core problem ContextSwitch was solving has largely been solved by the models themselves.

I didn’t feel right continuing to charge for something I wasn’t using day-to-day. That felt dishonest.

Who Might Still Want It?

That said, there are some real use cases where ContextSwitch still makes sense:

Local or less powerful models. If you’re running models locally through Ollama or using smaller models that don’t have the same context management abilities as the frontier models, an external task database is still really helpful. It gives the model a crutch it genuinely needs.

Multi-agent workflows. If you’re actively bouncing between different AI tools on the same project, the shared database is still the cleanest way to keep everyone on the same page. The MCP server means any compatible agent can pick up where another left off.

The diary feature. Even if you don’t need the kanban board for agent coordination, having an automated development journal is useful for teams or for your future self trying to remember why you made a particular decision three months ago.

It’s free now, so why not. There’s no downside to having it installed. If you end up not using it, you’re out nothing.

Get It

ContextSwitch on the Mac App Store. Free. No subscriptions, no in-app purchases, no catch.