It can do simple text replacement, so I have words, phrases, and sentences I use frequently compressed into a few keyboard clicks. It can also grab what is in your clipboard, so that can be incorporated into responses, which is simple but very handy.
A simple text replacement looks like this in the yml file: - trigger: ":espanso" replace: "Hi there!"
But it can even work with a shell, which I think is amazing! For example, I have a particular task at work where I often need to insert a random number into a text document. I can have Espano run PowerShell behind the scenes to run a simple PowerShell command, and that looks something like:
- trigger: ";rand"
replace: " {{output}}"
vars:
- name: output
type: shell
params:
cmd: "Get-Random -Minimum 100000"
shell: powershell