PauseCat

The High-Performance, SaaS-Grade Break Reminder for Windows.

---

Overview

PauseCat is a professional-grade Windows utility engineered in Rust and powered by WebView2 to provide a seamless, non-intrusive break experience. Designed for high-performance workstations, it ensures consistent health intervals without interrupting productivity with inefficient or flickering overlays.

The immersive break interface.

---

Key Features

Advanced Visual Engine

• High-Fidelity Overlays: Utilizes a GDI-based screen capture and pure Rust Gaussian blur implementation for instantaneous, flicker-free break transitions.
• Glassmorphic UI: Hardware-accelerated WebView2 host providing a modern, semi-transparent interface with smooth animations and interactive components.
• Native UX Hardening: Comprehensive protection against accidental gestures and system-level input interference to maintain application focus.

Intelligent System Integration

• Session Awareness: Monitors Windows Terminal Services (WTS) notifications to detect session locks, unlocks, and system sleep states, automatically pausing and resuming the timer.
• Media Control Synchronization: Integration with System Media Transport Controls (SMTC) to intelligently manage background media playback during active break sessions.
• Theme Synchronization: Real-time synchronization with Windows system theme preferences for a cohesive desktop experience.

Technical Excellence

• Optimized Performance: Low-overhead Rust implementation resulting in a minimal memory footprint and a compact binary size of less than 2.5 MB.
• Reliable State Management: Event-driven architecture powered by a central state machine to ensure consistent behavior across complex system events.
• Automated Update Pipeline: Integrated update engine for secure version management and automated deployment via GitHub Releases.
• Robust Input Validation: Enforced configuration limits and sanitization for work and break durations to ensure application stability.

---

Architectural Overview

System Workflow

graph TD
    A[Timer Engine] -- Heartbeat --> B{App State}
    B -- Break Triggered --> C[System Bridge]
    C -- Check Presence --> D{User Active?}
    D -- Yes --> E[Overlay Engine]
    D -- No --> F[Pause Timer]
    E -- GDI Snapshot --> G[Blur background]
    G -- WebView2 --> H[3D UI Layer]
    H -- User Dismiss --> I[Reset Timer]

Loading

Component Interaction

sequenceDiagram
    participant T as Timer Engine
    participant S as State Machine
    participant U as Updater / Syncer
    participant O as Overlay UI
    
    T->>S: Interval Reached
    S->>U: Check Asset Integrity
    U-->>S: Asset Ready
    S->>O: Initialize (Inject Settings)
    O-->>S: User Dismissed
    S->>T: Resume Heartbeat

Loading

---

Project Structure

pauseCat/
├── assets/             # HTML/CSS UI and static assets
├── src/
│   ├── app.rs          # Core application state machine
│   ├── events.rs       # Internal event definitions
│   ├── main.rs         # Entry point and Win32 loop
│   ├── settings.rs     # Persistence and configuration
│   ├── system.rs       # Win32 system hooks (Media, Theme, Presence)
│   ├── timer.rs        # Interruptible high-fidelity heartbeat
│   ├── tray.rs         # System tray and notification handler
│   ├── updater.rs      # GitHub API client and asset syncer
│   └── overlay/
│       ├── blur.rs     # Gaussian blur implementation
│       ├── capture.rs  # GDI BitBlt screen capture
│       └── webview.rs  # WebView2 host and resource injection
├── tests/              # Integration and unit test suite
└── wix/                # WiX Toolset installer configuration

---

Development Workflow

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.94+
• WebView2 Runtime
• WiX Toolset v4+ (for installer builds)
• UPX (for binary compression)

Local Setup

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/0xarchit/pauseCat.git
   cd pauseCat

2. Run in development mode:

   cargo run

3. Execute the test suite:

   cargo test

Building for Release

The release pipeline uses advanced link-time optimizations and binary compression.

# Optimized build with UPX
$env:RUSTFLAGS="-C link-arg=/OPT:REF -C link-arg=/OPT:ICF -C link-arg=/INCREMENTAL:NO"
cargo build --release
upx --best --lzma target\release\pausecat.exe

# Build MSI
wix build wix\main.wxs -ext WixToolset.UI.wixext -ext WixToolset.Util.wixext -o target\release\PauseCat_Installer.msi

---

Git Policy

• Feature Isolation: One branch per feature: feature/<description> or fix/<description>.
• Conventional Commits: Use feat:, fix:, refactor:, chore:, test:.
• Main is Read-Only: Never commit directly to main.

---

Installation

1. Download the latest PauseCat_Installer.msi from the Releases page.
2. The WiX installer handles everything: installation, autostart registry, and WebView2 runtime checks.
3. Once installed, PauseCat lives in your System Tray.

---

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for details.

---

Built with ❤️ in Rust for a healthier digital life.