How productivity tracking works, end to end

Concept · Audience: everyone

The full path from opening an app or website to it appearing in My Productivity.

What this does

Explains the two separate collection paths that both feed the same productivity report.

Who can do this

Everyone can read this.

What happens next

Native applications (like a code editor, Finder, or Slack's desktop app) are reported by the Desktop Agent: it detects your foreground application, records it as activity, and uploads it. Websites are reported by the browser extension instead — a desktop app cannot see what's inside another program's browser tab, so this is a genuinely separate collection path, installed separately.

Both paths feed the exact same pipeline from that point on: the activity is stored, matched against your workspace's classification rules (Highly Productive / Productive / Neutral / Unproductive / Ignored / Unclassified), and rolled into your Activity Pattern and Distribution numbers on My Productivity — Applications and Websites are shown as two separate lists there, matching the two separate collection paths, but classified through the identical rule system underneath.

Important notes

• Both paths only run while you're clocked in.

• A browser itself (e.g. "Google Chrome") is tracked as a container application, not as an "activity" — it's classified Ignored by default so it never inflates your active time; only the websites visited inside it count.