Overview

If you have ever typed the same boilerplate for the hundredth time, switched between three tools just to paste a hostname pattern, or watched a snippet manager fight with terminals and web apps because “paste” is not universal - you already know why Poltergeist exists.

Poltergeist is a portable Windows snippet manager built for people who live in real windows: tickets, shells, browsers, and odd legacy fields that only behave when keys arrive in the right shape. Press a global hotkey, pick text from a nested menu at your mouse cursor, and let it inject into whichever control had focus - by clipboard, by typing, or by paths tuned for picky surfaces.

The UI is meant to stay out of the way until you summon it. Underneath, a token language handles dates, context variables from regex captures, lookups against CSV and Excel-backed databases, translation hooks, includes, and conditionals - so “snippet” can mean a one-liner or a small program that adapts to what you selected.

Poltergeist does not pretend to be a cloud product. Config and cache live beside the executable; there is no installer story tied to the registry. Team share is optional: point at a UNC folder or an HTTP(S) manifest, and the app can merge read-only team trees with your personal library, with cache fallback when the network blinks.

Whether you are replacing a retired GhostWriter workflow or trimming fat from a heavier phrase expander, Poltergeist aims to feel like a workshop tool - predictable inputs, honest injection modes, and enough power in the token layer that you are not back to maintaining a parallel spreadsheet.