What You Are Making
A Windsurf Cascade prompt that reads yesterday's screen time data from ScreenTimerAI and generates a short daily productivity report inside your editor.
No browser tabs. No extra apps. Just open Cascade and ask.
Why Windsurf
Windsurf is an AI-powered IDE built by Codeium. Its standout feature is Cascade, a deep agentic AI assistant that can autonomously handle multi-step coding tasks, read your project context, and take action on your behalf. Developers choose Windsurf when they want an AI-first editor that goes beyond autocomplete into full autonomous coding workflows. Connecting screen time tracking to Windsurf makes sense because Cascade already reasons through complex tasks for you — adding your productivity data means it can factor real usage patterns into its suggestions. You never have to leave your editor to open a separate dashboard or browser tab. Everything stays inside Cascade.
Step 1: Connect ScreenTimerAI To Windsurf
There are two ways to set this up:
Open Windsurf Settings, go to Cascade, then MCP Servers.
Click "View raw config" and add ScreenTimerAI:
"screentimerai-activities": {
"command": "/Applications/ScreenTimerAI.app/Contents/MacOS/activity-mcp-server",
"args": []
}
Restart Windsurf after saving.
If you want to test that Step 1 worked, open Cascade and try one of these prompts:
| MCP function | Test prompt |
|---|---|
get_current_activity | What am I doing right now? |
get_activity_logs | Get my raw activity logs for yesterday. |
show_activity_timeline | Show me an activity timeline for yesterday. |
summarize_activity_range | Summarize my activity for yesterday. |
analyze_focus_segments | Analyze my focus segments for yesterday afternoon. |
show_focus_score_timeline | Show me a focus score timeline for today. |
show_focus_score_trends | Show me my focus score last week. |
Step 2: Generate Your Daily Report
Open Cascade (Cmd+L) and paste this prompt:
Generate a daily productivity text report based on yesterday's Screen Time AI data.
Follow these steps:
1. Fetch yesterday's activity data from Screen Time AI.
2. Write a short productivity report (~150 words) from the perspective of a dark, witty productivity coach reacting to the data.
Rules:
- Focus more on failures than successes
- Use short, punchy sentences
- Be dark and witty, commanding not polished
- Swearing is allowed sparingly for impact
- Return only the final report text, nothing else
Return the report as plain text directly in the chat.Cascade will show the ScreenTimerAI tool calls and ask for approval before executing. Approve the calls and the report appears in the chat panel.
Other Prompts To Try
Once the MCP connection is working, you can ask Cascade anything about your screen time data. Here are a few prompts to get you started:
- Show me my top 5 apps by time spent yesterday. Cascade will pull your activity logs and rank applications by total usage, so you can see exactly where your hours went.
- How many context switches did I have yesterday afternoon? This is useful for understanding how fragmented your focus was during a specific time window. Cascade counts the app transitions for you.
- Compare my screen time this week vs last week. Get a side-by-side breakdown of total usage, top apps, and trends without opening a dashboard.
- Analyze my focus segments for yesterday and identify my most productive hours. Cascade will look at your focus score data and highlight the time blocks where you were in deep work versus scattered across apps.
Mix and match these with the daily report prompt or use them standalone whenever you want a quick insight from Cascade.
Troubleshooting
If something is not working after setup, check these common issues:
- MCP tools not appearing in Cascade? Open Windsurf Settings, go to Cascade, then MCP Servers. Look for the ScreenTimerAI server entry and confirm it shows a green status indicator. If the indicator is missing or red, the server is not connected.
- Server failed to connect? Verify the binary path is correct. The file should be at
/Applications/ScreenTimerAI.app/Contents/MacOS/activity-mcp-serverand it must be executable. You can confirm by running the path directly in your terminal. - Cascade not calling tools? Make sure the MCP server is enabled and not toggled off in the Cascade settings panel. Windsurf lets you disable individual MCP servers without removing them from the config.
What Happens Next
Every time you run the prompt in Cascade, Windsurf pulls your latest screen time data through the MCP connection and generates a fresh report.
Keep it as a go-to prompt for a quick morning check-in without leaving your editor.