I Built a Pixel Hero That Nags Me to Drink Water (and Runs 100% on My Laptop)

Description and use

Break Buddy is a Windows app that uses a local LLM to generate personalized, context‑aware reminders about drinking water and taking breaks, varying each message and respecting meeting status.

Problem

Long periods of laptop use without reminders that adapt to context and personality.

Outcome

Break Buddy delivers effective, varied reminders that respect user context, using a small local LLM for parsing and message generation, achieving 100% meeting detection and 100% message rule compliance with a 3.3 GB model.

Workflow

• 1. Install Windows, Python, and Ollama.
• 2. Clone https://github.com/kumudasrip/Break-Buddy.
• 3. Run the app; it starts silently in the background.
• 4. Type a single sentence to configure reminders, tone, and time windows.
• 5. The app uses a local LLM to parse the sentence into a JSON config.
• 6. The app monitors active window titles and idle time.
• 7. When a reminder is due, a pixel‑art hero pops up with a unique message in the chosen tone.
• 8. User can snooze, pause, or quit via the popup or tray icon.

Evidence

Setup is one typed sentence.

Source

It reads my active window title, labels what I'm doing (coding, video, meeting, documents...), and holds reminders back during a Zoom or Google Meet call.

Source

The small model was enough. The bigger models got exactly one more setup sentence right... On labeling and message quality, e4b matched or beat them.

Source