Introducing Bombay: from voice to code in seconds
You're in the shower. An idea strikes. "Siri, remind me to add filters to Bombay."
Thirty seconds later, the task appears in your inbox. Refined. Prioritised. Ready to implement. Your continuous delivery pipeline picks it up and turns it into a pull request.
This is Bombay.
The Problem
Tasks are everywhere. Voice notes on Reminders. Quick messages in Slack. Design references in WhatsApp. A scribbled note on your desk. By the time you sit down to work, half your brilliant ideas are scattered across five apps, and the other half are forgotten.
Even when you capture something, the gap between capture and execution is wide. A voice note doesn't magically become a pull request. It needs to be written down properly, refined, prioritised, and handed to your build system.
Bombay closes that gap. Our north star metric: time from voice dictation to committed change.
What Bombay Is
Bombay is two things working together:
The background service — Continuously exports Apple Reminders to a single, always-up-to-date text file. Every reminder. Every list. Every completion status and due date. Perfect for voice capture via Siri.
The dashboard — A project management interface where tasks flow from capture → refinement → prioritisation → autonomous implementation.
How It Works: The Core Workflow
1. Capture
Dictate a reminder via Siri. Add a detail via voice note. Slack a quick idea. It gets pulled into Bombay.
2. Sync
The background service continuously watches Apple Reminders and updates your reminders export file. Real-time, always fresh.
3. Refine
Reminders come in raw. The dashboard lets you break them down: write proper acceptance criteria, estimate scope, spot blockers. The /refine system in Claude Code helps with this—it asks clarifying questions and breaks vague ideas into actionable tasks.
4. Implement
Pick a refined task. Claude Code invokes the /ralph system to work on it relentlessly. Commits are created. Tests are run. Pull requests are opened.
5. Deploy
Your CI/CD pipeline reviews the PR. If it passes, merge and ship.
The entire flow: voice → text → task → code → production.
The Dashboard
The Bombay dashboard gives you a 10,000-foot view of every project you're working on.
What you see:
- Project overview — All your projects at a glance. Task counts per inbox state.
- Inline kanban — Reminders grouped by readiness: unrefined → auto-refined → refined → checked → closed
- Sparklines — Visual history of task completion over time. Spot trends at a glance.
- Filters — Toggle by readiness state, roadmap phase (now/next/later), or search by keyword
- Quick-add — Add items directly to any project's inbox without leaving the dashboard
The dashboard runs locally on your Mac. All your data stays on your machine.
Task Capture: Connectors
Right now, tasks come from two sources:
Reminders — Apple Reminders via Siri voice capture. Always available, voice-first.
Desktop files — Drop markdown files into a watched folder and they auto-import as tasks.
Coming soon:
- Email integration — forward a message, it becomes a task
- Slack —
/remindmessages become tasks in Bombay - WhatsApp — forward a chat and it auto-imports
Each connector feeds into the same refinement pipeline.
The Auto-work System
This is where Bombay gets powerful. Refined tasks don't stay tasks forever—they become pull requests.
The auto-work system picks up refined tasks from your .in/refined/ inbox, invokes Claude to plan and implement them, and opens pull requests for human review. No manual "what do I work on next?" decision-making. Just refined tasks → code → git commits → PRs.
It runs on a schedule (hourly, configurable) or on-demand. You stay in control—everything goes to pull requests first. Nothing ships without human approval.
Architecture
Bombay is built on:
- macOS menu bar app — A small, unobtrusive menu bar icon that shows inbox status at a glance
- Nuxt 3 dashboard — A modern single-page app for task management, built with TypeScript and Tailwind CSS
- Python backend — Handles service orchestration, reminder syncing, and the auto-work engine
- EventKit framework — Accesses Apple Reminders reliably and efficiently
Everything runs locally. No cloud, no data export, no privacy concerns.
Why Bombay Exists
Most task managers ask you to fit your workflow into their model. Bombay flips that. It's built around how makers actually work: voice capture first, refinement on your terms, and autonomous execution when you're ready.
The goal isn't to be another todo app. It's to compress the time between "I have an idea" and "the idea is live in production."
What's Next
Right now, Bombay is powering how I build my projects. The roadmap includes:
- More connectors (email, Slack, WhatsApp)
- Deeper Claude integration for smarter task routing
- Collaborative features for teams
- Notarised app distribution (coming soon as a native Mac app)
Try It
Bombay is open source and free to use. If you're a maker, developer, or UX practitioner looking to compress the gap between thought and code, give it a shot.
Visit the repository, clone it, and run through the setup. The dashboard runs at http://localhost:8765/ once you start the service.
Your next great idea is just a voice note away.