Showcase Project

Attention Firewall

Rule-based Windows notification filtering.
Surfaces what matters. Blocks what doesn't.

✓ Active

Built with Amplifier · January–February 2026

The Problem

Notifications are broken

🔔

Everything Screams

WhatsApp groups, Teams channels, system alerts — every app competes for your attention equally.

🤷

No Intelligence

"User reacted with 👍" gets the same priority as a message from your CEO.

⚡

Death by Volume

~74 notifications per day on average. Most are noise. The important ones get buried.

The Solution

A personal firewall
for your attention

Every notification evaluated against configurable rules.
VIPs always get through. Noise never does.

How It Works

Four-layer filtering pipeline

Notification
arrives

→

Suppress?
noise patterns

→

VIP?
always surface

→

Keyword?
surface match

→

Default
per-app rule

            Config-driven: 9 VIP senders, 20 priority keywords, 11 suppress patterns. Teams messages surface immediately; WhatsApp batches to periodic digests. All defined in a single YAML file.
        

Configuration

One YAML file controls everything

# App-specific behavior
apps:
  Microsoft Teams:
    default_action: surface      # Always show
  WhatsApp:
    default_action: summarize    # Batch for digest

# VIP senders — always get through
vip_senders:
  - "Kevin Scott"
  - "James Cham"
  - "Jesse Vincent"

# Noise patterns — always suppressed
suppress_patterns:
  - "liked your message"
  - "reacted with"
  - "is typing"

In Action

Real filtering decisions

✓

VIP sender mentions "amplifier" → surface

✕

"User reacted with 👍" → suppress

⏳

Group chat discussion → batch for digest

✓

Windows Security

Security alert → always surface

Based on actual filtering decisions from the notification database

Impact

22 days of real usage

1,628

Notifications processed

9.3%

Surface rate

151

Surfaced as important

            90.7% of notifications never interrupted the user. Over 22 days (Jan 30 – Feb 20, 2026), only 151 of 1,628 notifications were deemed important enough to surface immediately. The rest were batched into digests or suppressed as noise.
        

Ecosystem

Beyond filtering

🔧

Amplifier Tool Module

Query the notification database conversationally. "What did I miss in the last 2 hours?" Available as a first-class Amplifier tool.

📊

HTML Digests

4× daily digest generation (9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm). Batched WhatsApp messages rendered as browsable HTML summaries. 5 digests generated to date.

🧵

Topic Tracker

122 conversation threads extracted from group chats. Tracks topics across groups with 140 updates logged and watch list support.

📋

Live Dashboard

Interactive HTML dashboard for reviewing all notification decisions, filtering stats, and audit trails.

Development

Built and running

~657

Lines of Python (verified)

3

Code locations

22

Days running

Primary contributor: Sam Schillace (100% of commits found)
Tool module: firewall-bundle + my-amplifier integration (3 commits, Feb 2–12, 2026)
Note: ~657 covers tool module (452 lines) + topic tracker (205 lines). Daemon source not located.

Sources

Research Methodology

Data as of: February 20, 2026

Feature status: Active (last DB entry: 2026-02-20T18:50 UTC)

Research performed:

Notification DB: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM notifications → 1,628 rows
Decision breakdown: SELECT decision, COUNT(*) GROUP BY decision
Date range: SELECT MIN(timestamp), MAX(timestamp) → Jan 30 – Feb 20
App breakdown: SELECT app_id, COUNT(*) GROUP BY app_id → 98.3% WhatsApp
Config review: cat ~/.attention-firewall/config.yaml
Code line counts: find ... -name "*.py" -exec wc -l → 657 total
Git history: git log --all -- tools/attention-firewall/ → 3 commits
Topics DB: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM threads → 122 threads, 140 updates

Gaps: The notification daemon/interceptor source was not located in accessible repos. Verified line count (~657) covers Amplifier tool modules (452 lines) and topic tracker (205 lines). The daemon and dashboard generator may add additional code.

Primary contributor: Sam Schillace (100% of git commits found)

Take back your attention.

1,628 notifications. 151 that mattered.
The rest never interrupted.

Built with Amplifier