When I moved from PCs to a Mac in 2011, one of the first things I did was to find an application launcher; on Windows, I used SlickRun and Executor. I found Alfred, and I’ve used it since, 18.7 times a day on average.
Note: I lost the stats between 2011 and 2014.
I paid for the Powerpack shortly after adopting the tool, so I can use some of its features that are only available that way.
I have used a few Workflows over the years (such as the one for 1Password, and more recently, Shimmerin Obsidian). However, I had never created one, despite the excellent ways the tool offers to do so.
That changed a few weeks ago.
I needed to automate a small step in my voice journaling process: cleaning up Markdown files in one folder and copying/moving them to another.
I had no idea how to do that, and no time to figure it out. So I used an AI tool (Cursor).
I explained my desired outcome, what I had to work with (the files, Alfred, etc.), and it:
- Talked me out of using Cursor CLI, which wasn’t needed to accomplish my immediate goal
- Created a bash script
- Gave me a step-by-step guide to create the workflow in Alfred (after a few attempts to create a workflow file to import)
My Process Journal workflow is simple:
- I trigger it with a “process-journal” keyword (just the first few characters)
- It runs a bash script
- It displays a list of the affected files
Nothing Earth-shattering, but just what I needed as the next step in the evolution of my system.
Since then, I created another useful workflow. But that’s the topic for another post.
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