Ask HN: What is a desktop automation task you would pay for? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is a desktop automation task you would pay for?

2 pointsiiJDSii4 comments

What is something you or someone at your company has to do repetitively on a desktop?

For example, it may involve some minor variations, could be kind of 'messy' and involves clicking through various programs, checking outputs, deciding from there, etc.

Example: during an internship I remember running regression tests, which meant running some scripts, re-running them if they hanged for too long (don't ask), checking output log files for a few specific lines, and then emailing the results to my supervisor. Having to babysit the software run and do the manual stuff at the end was a pain and seemed like a waste of time but was unfortunately necessary.

Would be interested to hear other specific examples, as me and a few buddies are working on some desktop agent programs to try and tackle some tasks like this.

Suggesting the specific bookmark subfolder that a website URL should be saved to, as a default presented (that could be ignored/overridden easily). I’m in content consumption mode on my iPad, and I have 200+ subfolders that I save bookmarks to, depending on the topic, content, etc. Spinning through to the right bookmark subfolder on iOS takes time, and software (dare I say AI) to guess which subfolder to save the bookmark, even if it’s right only 50% of the time, would make my cruising the Internet much more efficient.

Prompt-based window snapping. For example, I would describe how windows should snap based on the type of app, the number of windows and more. Example: single terminal window should snap bottom left, second window should snap next to it. Browser window full screen unless other apps are open in which case half screen left. Etc.

Is this like window/program repositioning for multiple monitors or something? Just making sure I understand.

Would you describe how every window should be positioned? And if so would you want to just do so once, and then have the configuration (or configuration pattern, as you might have a similar but different set of windows) set up when you ask for e.g. "apply my window snapping" ?

This could be for one or multiple monitors. I’d want to ideally only have to describe my snapping rules once and then just have windows snap automatically, but also be able to tweak my instructions as I maybe discover edge cases.

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