MacBook Steps begins with a real observation and refuses to treat it with the appropriate seriousness. While coding agents work, Josiah sometimes walks around carrying the laptop—behavior that resembles exercise just enough to invite a product no one asked for.
The project takes the form of a deliberately silly native Mac app that estimates steps taken while someone carries an open MacBook around the room supervising agents, then pairs the count with exaggerated local agent-activity metrics. Its purpose is to turn an absurdly specific work habit into a small, knowingly unnecessary product gag.
The question behind MacBook Steps
The app is a pedometer for that exact situation. Its audience is people who understand why supervising autonomous code might involve pacing with an open MacBook and why counting those steps is both technically questionable and emotionally correct. The tiny audience is people who recognize the joke. Anyone relying on it for health measurement would be using it beyond its purpose.
How MacBook Steps took shape
The joke has since become a native SwiftUI menu-bar app with a dashboard, achievements, motion-derived steps, and local counters for Codex and Claude Code token use. A companion Remotion composition presents it with the gravity of a product launch, while the implementation remains explicit that a laptop is a bad pedometer and the result is not fitness data. Josiah originated the observation, joke, and product framing.
What the evidence supports
A working macOS source artifact, build script, local token telemetry, dashboard, achievements, and launch-video composition are available. Its step count is not validated fitness data. As a portfolio entry, MacBook Steps documents a new physical ritual of agent-assisted work. It is useful not because the market needs it, but because precise jokes often notice a behavioral change before serious product language catches up.
A laptop is a poor pedometer, the use case is intentionally ridiculous, and this should never be presented as fitness technology. The project is best kept as a tiny, deliberately over-engineered utility; any future work should improve the joke and polish without pretending it is fitness technology.