AInotate

Annotated screenshots for AI agents. Show, don't describe.

You: How do I post a link on Hacker News?

Agent without AInotate: "In the orange bar at the top of the page, find submit, the last link after jobs..."

Agent with AInotate: sends the image above. "Click submit, where the blue arrow points."

AInotate lets an AI agent answer "where" and "how" questions with a picture: it captures a web page, a window or any screenshot, finds the elements, adds numbered steps, Skitch-style arrows, boxes and labels where they cover the least content, blacks out secrets, and checks the result before sending it. It works in Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor and any MCP client, from the command line and from Python.

What it is for

• "Where is it?" Settings, menus, buttons that hide behind icons. The agent answers with the screen itself, the control boxed and numbered.
• "Walk me through it." One image per step, in the order to follow; ainotate guide turns them into a Markdown, HTML or PDF guide.
• "Your turn." A permission switch, a 2FA code, a payment or consent screen: the agent does not click for you. It shows exactly what to press and says what the click does.
• Bug reports and tickets. What is wrong, outlined in red, what is right in green, emails and tokens blacked out before anyone sees them.
• Docs and changelogs. Screenshots that point at the thing the text talks about, re-shot from the same spec when the UI changes; before and after plates for a change.

Set it up in your agent

1. Install (Python 3.10+):

pipx install "ainotate[all]"   # or: uv tool install "ainotate[all]"
ainotate doctor                # checks this machine, prints the exact fix for anything missing

2. Connect it to the agent you use:

{"mcpServers": {"ainotate": {"command": "ainotate", "args": ["mcp"]}}}

AInotate runs on your own computer: Cowork reaches it through the Claude desktop app, so keep the app open while a task uses it. The plugin starts the installed ainotate, or runs it with uvx when it is not installed.

The skill teaches an agent when and how to annotate: pick a source, find exact positions, annotate, read the image to verify, deliver. The plugin brings it along; without the plugin it ships with the package:

ainotate install-skill             # Claude Code and Codex (~/.claude/skills, ~/.agents/skills)
ainotate install-skill --zip ~/Desktop   # a ZIP for Claude Desktop, Cowork, claude.ai:
                                         # Customize > Skills > Upload a skill

Config paths for every OS, permissions and the tool list: skill/references/mcp.md.

3. Ask. "Show me where to switch Wikipedia to dark mode." The agent captures the page, annotates it, checks it and sends the image. With the skill it also does this on its own whenever an answer depends on where something is on the screen: a "how do I" question, a visual bug, a before/after of a change.

Gallery

Every image below was made in one shoot call against a public site: open the page, find the elements, place the labels, draw, frame. The specs are in docs/images/specs.

Numbered steps on the busy header of DontPayFull, coupons for 20,000+ stores	Box, arrow and highlight on GitHub
Step-by-step guide with browser chrome and a gradient frame	Bug report, emails redacted automatically by the privacy scan
Magnifier and keycaps for tiny controls and shortcuts	Before / after plate from two shots

Four arrow styles: skitch (default: straight when the way is clear, a gentle bend when it is long and diagonal, a curve around text), curved, straight, line

Phone preset: mobile viewport, touch and user agent

Labels that stay off the content

A label dropped at a fixed spot next to its target usually lands on the text the reader needs. AInotate places every label itself:

• It maps the page content first (text, icons, lines, images) and tries hundreds of spots per label. Empty space near the target wins; a spot over text is used only when the frame has no free room.
• Arrows are priced too: a long arrow, or one that crosses text, another label or another mark, loses to a shorter, cleaner one. When the straight path crosses text, the arrow curves around it.
• All labels are planned together, so the first one cannot take the only clean spot a later one needs.
• Step badges sit on the corner of their box that covers the least.

The image is never enlarged to make room. If a label still has to cover something, AInotate says so in a warning, and label_at pins a label exactly where you want it.

From the command line

Save this as hn.json:

{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com",
 "frame": {"chrome": "browser"},
 "marks": [
  {"type": "step", "n": 1, "target": {"text": "new", "exact": true},
   "label": "Newest"},
  {"type": "step", "n": 2, "target": {"text": "login"},
   "label": "Sign in"}]}

ainotate shoot hn.json --draft    # temp file; drop --draft to save

The output path is printed on stdout. Images are saved to ~/Pictures/AInotate unless you configure another folder. ainotate --help lists every command (capture, annotate, locate by OCR, grid, zoom, guide, compare, animate, copy); the full spec is in skill/references/spec.md. Exit codes: 0 ok, 1 cannot save, 2 invalid spec, 3 cannot draw, 4 capture failed or an optional dependency is missing, 5 ambiguous text target, 6 target not found.

Python. The same pipeline is importable:

from ainotate.shoot import shoot
res = shoot({"url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot",
             "marks": [{"type": "box",
                        "target": {"text": "View history"},
                        "label": "Past edits"}]}, draft=True)
print(res.paths[0], res.redactions)

Features

• Marks: numbered step, box, arrow, click ripple, keys (keycaps), magnify (loupe), highlight, spotlight, text, solid redact, and decorative blur / pixelate.
• Placement that reads well: labels go to free space near their target and are planned together; arrows are tapered Skitch-style shapes with a soft shadow that curve around text (see Labels that stay off the content). Warnings for overlapping labels, crossing arrows, more than 6 marks or labels over 4 words.
• Web capture in one call: ainotate shoot opens a page (laptop, wide or phone preset), runs actions (click, fill, wait, scroll), measures each target, redacts, annotates and saves.
• Any browser: its own Playwright Chromium, Firefox or WebKit, or attach over CDP to a Chromium you already use and are logged into (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, BrowserOS). The preset is applied to that one tab and restored afterwards.
• Any image: locate finds text by OCR (Apple Vision, Windows OCR or Tesseract); grid and zoom locate icons at full resolution. Screen, window and clipboard capture are built in.
• Desktop apps on macOS: ainotate window ID --target measures buttons, switches and fields through the Accessibility API, so marks sit exactly on the control, icons included; ainotate elements --app NAME lists what it can find.
• Frames: gradient backgrounds (auto from the screenshot, or presets), rounded corners, shadow, browser or window chrome, social aspect ratios.
• Sharing: guides in Markdown, HTML and PDF; before/after plates; APNG and GIF animations; copy to the clipboard.
• Strict specs: a typo stops the run with a list of every problem instead of saving a wrong or unredacted image. Clear exit codes.
• Diacritics: bundled Inter font, so Romanian, German, French and other Latin-script labels render correctly everywhere.

Privacy

• Redaction is solid. redact paints an opaque block. AInotate never uses blur to hide data: blur and pixelation can be reversed. blur and pixelate exist only to de-emphasize clutter, and a mark flagged "sensitive": true is refused for them.
• Automatic redaction is on for web shots. shoot scans the live page (text and input values) for emails, phone numbers, card numbers, IBANs, API keys, tokens, JWTs, password and personal-data fields, and blacks them out. On images it runs on OCR when you pass --privacy auto. You can allow-list your own addresses or add regexes.
• It is best-effort. Detection misses things: text drawn in images or canvas, unusual formats, data split across elements, embedded frames from other sites (reported, not redacted). Always look at the image before you share it. The skill makes this check mandatory for agents.
• Local. Capture, OCR and rendering run on your machine. AInotate makes no network requests of its own beyond loading the pages you ask it to capture.

Platform support

Experimental means implemented and unit-tested with mocks, not yet verified on real Windows or Linux machines. Reports are welcome.

License

Copyright © 2026 DontPayFull. AInotate is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later. If you run a modified AInotate as a network service, the AGPL requires you to offer its source to the users of that service.

Bundled and derived third-party work (the Inter font, arrow proportions from Arrowshot, a label-placement idea from github/awesome-copilot) and dependency licenses are listed in NOTICE.

Made with ❤️ by the DontPayFull team
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