Desktop Assistant

Some work lives in desktop apps that do not talk to anything else. An accounting app with no online link. A settings page you never remember how to find. A form you must fill in again and again. This work is slow, and it is easy to make a small slip when you rush it.

The Desktop Assistant does this work for you. It looks at your screen, clicks, types and checks what happened, one step at a time. It works like a careful pair of hands at a workbench: one tool, one cut, then a close look at the result. You do not have to watch every click. You can get on with other things and come back to a finished job.

It also works like a good colleague at someone else's desk. It does not guess. When a button does not respond, it says so and tries another way, instead of clicking the same spot again and again. Every step ends with a look at the screen, so you know the step really worked before the next one starts.

You stay in charge. Press Esc at any time and it stops at once. It asks you before it uses an app for the first time. It also asks before anything that sends, posts, buys, pays, deletes or uninstalls. It never types your passwords, card numbers or one-time codes. It never works with password managers, security settings or sign-in prompts. Those steps stay with you. Bring it in for the dull, repeated jobs that still matter.

• Fill in forms and copy details from one desktop app into another, such as contact details from a spreadsheet into a customer app (a CRM, which is a tool that keeps your list of customers).
• Run exports, such as pulling last month's invoices (the bills you send to customers) out of your accounting app and saving them as a file.
• Change settings for you, such as opening the display settings and switching on night light, without you hunting through menus.
• Repeat the same steps across many items, one action at a time, and check the screen after each one.
• Take a screenshot (a picture of the screen) of the finished result, so you can see the outcome yourself before you trust it.
• Try a different way when a step fails, and tell you so, rather than repeating a step that did not work. If it cannot finish, it says where it got to, so you can take over from that exact point.
• Remember which apps you use and which steps worked, so the next run of the same job goes faster.
• Work in the Browser panel, the part of Upfyn that shows a web page, when a job also needs a website.

This member has no skill folders of its own. Its common asks are the plain jobs you would give a careful helper:

• "Export last month's invoices from my accounting app." Use it when the data sits in an app that has no link to anything else.
• "Copy these contact details from the spreadsheet into my CRM app." Use it when you would otherwise retype the same details by hand.
• "Open the display settings and switch on night light." Use it for a quick setting you cannot find. For a single Windows action like this, such as opening a Settings page or starting a new Word document, it runs that one action directly, with no screenshots, so the job is quick.

Every app you use this way must be approved by you the first time. After that, the assistant knows the app, and it remembers the steps that worked there. Some steps always wait for your clear yes. Sending, posting, buying, paying, deleting and uninstalling are all hard to undo, so the assistant stops and asks first. If you decline, it does not try the same step another way.

Here is the job the Desktop Assistant handles most often: pulling a month of invoices out of a desktop accounting app and saving them as a spreadsheet.

1. You ask: "Export last month's invoices from my accounting app as a spreadsheet."
2. It finds the accounting app's window on your screen. This is the first time it has used that app, so it asks you to approve the app. You say yes, and it carries on.
3. It looks at the screen, reads the list of controls the app shows, and opens the reports page.
4. It sets the date range to last month. Then it checks the screen to confirm the range is right before it goes on.
5. It starts the export. After each click it looks at the new screen, so a step that failed does not carry on into the next one. If any step would send, pay or delete something, it stops and asks you first.
6. The export finishes, and the spreadsheet is saved where you can find it. The assistant takes a screenshot of the finished result.
7. It tells you in plain words what it did, and shows you the screenshot.
8. You open the spreadsheet and check a few totals yourself. You can press Esc at any point before that, and it stops at once.

What you get at the end is a finished export, the spreadsheet saved where you can find it, a screenshot of the result and a plain list of the steps it took. Like a pit crew that changes the tyres in seconds and then shows the driver that each wheel is tight, the assistant finishes the step and shows you the proof. You keep the final say on the numbers.