hypruse 0.2.0

Computer use for Hyprland: semantic desktop state over IPC plus vision and native Wayland input, in one MCP server

hypruse

Computer use for Hyprland. An MCP server that gives AI agents native hands on your Wayland desktop: workspaces, windows, mouse, keyboard, screenshots.

No ydotool daemon. No root. No portals. No X11.

Why

Computer use exists on macOS and Windows. On Linux there is effectively nothing: the Claude Desktop Linux beta explicitly ships without screen control, Anthropic's reference implementation is an X11 container, and the existing Wayland attempts lean on setuid uinput hacks or GNOME-only portals.

Meanwhile Hyprland already exposes everything an agent needs, better than any accessibility bridge: a complete IPC surface for state and window management, and first-class Wayland protocols for input. hypruse just wires them to MCP:

• Semantic first. desktop returns the real window/workspace tree (addresses, classes, titles, geometry) in one call. The agent switches workspaces and focuses windows the way you do (instantly, over IPC), not by squinting at pixels.
• Vision when it matters. Screenshots of a monitor, an exact window crop, or a zoomed region, with the geometry/scale metadata to map any pixel back to a clickable coordinate.
• Native input. Clicks and scrolls are spoken directly over the Wayland wire (zwlr_virtual_pointer_v1); typing goes through wtype's virtual keyboard with a proper XKB keymap, unicode-safe on any layout.

How it works

agent (Claude Code, or any MCP client)
   │ stdio
   ▼
hypruse
   ├── hyprctl -j ········▶ desktop state: monitors, workspaces, windows
   ├── hyprctl dispatch ··▶ focus / move / close / launch / movecursor
   ├── grim ··············▶ screenshots: monitor, window crop, region
   ├── wtype ·············▶ keyboard (zwp_virtual_keyboard_v1, real XKB keymap)
   └── raw Wayland wire ··▶ click & scroll (zwlr_virtual_pointer_v1)

Design decisions:

• No ydotool / uinput. That path needs a daemon, udev rules or root, and types US scancodes that break on other layouts. hypruse is just another Wayland client of your compositor, same standing as wlrctl.
• No portals. xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland does not implement the RemoteDesktop portal (InputCapture is capture, not injection), so anything built on libei/portals silently degrades on Hyprland. hypruse doesn't try.
• Cursor positioning via hyprctl dispatch movecursor (global logical coordinates, exact on any monitor layout), with only button/axis events on the virtual pointer, sidestepping the known multi-monitor bugs of absolute virtual-pointer motion (hyprwm/Hyprland#6749).

Tools

tool	what it does
desktop	One-call semantic snapshot: monitors, workspaces, windows (address/class/title/geometry), active window, cursor
screenshot	Focused monitor, exact window crop by address, or x,y,WxH region; returns image + coordinate-mapping metadata
pointer	move / click / drag / scroll in global coordinates
keyboard	Type literal text (unicode-safe) or press combos: ctrl+shift+t, super+enter, F5
hypr	Switch workspace, focus/move/close windows, fullscreen, floating (pure IPC, milliseconds)
launch	Start an app (optionally silent on another workspace), block on its actual openwindow event, return its address; detects single-instance apps (browsers) whose window ignores exec rules and moves it to the requested workspace
binds	The user's own keybinds, decoded (SUPER+Q, action, description) so the agent can drive the desktop through its owner's shortcuts instead of clicking
wait_for	Block on real compositor events (window open/close, workspace change, title change) with a match filter and timeout; replaces sleep-and-hope in multi-step automations

Install

Requirements: Hyprland, grim, wtype (most Hyprland setups already have both), and uv.

Arch Linux, from the AUR:

yay -S hypruse        # or hypruse-git for main

Then let it set itself up and verify the environment:

hypruse init     # detects your MCP clients, registers (asks first), runs doctor
hypruse doctor   # just the diagnostics

Manual registration, Claude Code:

claude mcp add -s user hypruse -- uvx hypruse

From a source checkout:

claude mcp add -s user hypruse -- uv run --directory /path/to/hypruse hypruse

Any other MCP client: run uvx hypruse as a stdio server.

Read-only mode: set HYPRUSE_READONLY=1 in the server config to expose only the observation tools (desktop, screenshot, binds, wait_for). The agent can see and narrate but cannot click, type, or launch. A good first week.

Claude Desktop (Linux beta)

The Linux beta ships without Anthropic's first-party computer use, but stdio MCP servers work in chat, which makes hypruse the workaround. In ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hypruse": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["hypruse"],
      "env": { "HYPRUSE_SCREENSHOT_MODE": "image" }
    }
  }
}

Two Desktop-specific notes: use image mode (Desktop renders inline MCP images and has no file-read tool), and the app must run natively inside your Hyprland session so the server inherits WAYLAND_DISPLAY/HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE; from a VM or container it cannot reach your compositor. If your Desktop install bypasses tool-approval prompts, treat the Waybar indicator + panic keybind as mandatory, not optional.

Security model

Read this section before installing. hypruse hands an agent your mouse, your keyboard, your screen contents, and an app launcher. The layers that keep that sane:

1. Approval: MCP clients gate tool calls. In Claude Code, allowlist the read-only tools (desktop, screenshot) and leave pointer/keyboard/hypr/launch on ask-first until you trust a workflow.
2. Visibility: the server maintains an activity beacon ($XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/hypruse/state.json); the shipped Waybar module is invisible when idle and shows a robot indicator while an agent has hands on your desktop.
3. Interruption: click the indicator, or bind a panic key: bind = SUPER SHIFT, BackSpace, exec, pkill -f hypruse. Killing it mid-action is safe: button press/release pairs never span tool calls, so it cannot die holding a button.
4. The seat is shared. There is one cursor and one keyboard focus, and Hyprland's focus-follows-mouse means a cursor move alone can retarget keystrokes. Don't type while an agent is driving; watch the indicator.
5. Scope: stdio only (no network listener), no clipboard access, nothing persisted except the beacon. A screenshot sees everything visible: treat an agent session like screen sharing.

Performance

Measured on a live session (Hyprland 0.55, 1080p, 20 windows): desktop ~30 ms, workspace/window dispatch ~10-20 ms, screenshots ~0.5 s. If tool calls feel slow, it is almost certainly the MCP approval prompt in front of each call, not the server. Allowlist the tools you trust and the latency disappears. Claude Code (.claude/settings.json):

{
  "permissions": {
    "allow": [
      "mcp__hypruse__desktop",
      "mcp__hypruse__screenshot",
      "mcp__hypruse__hypr"
      // add pointer/keyboard/launch once you trust your workflows
    ]
  }
}

Coordinates

Everything speaks Hyprland's global logical coordinates, the space hyprctl cursorpos and window at use. Screenshots are pixel-space; each capture returns geometry and scale so global = origin + pixel / scale. On scale 1.0 monitors (most setups) image pixels are global coordinates.

In image mode, captures automatically fit the host's result-size limit (Claude Desktop caps tool results at 1 MB): format degrades before resolution (native PNG, then full-res JPEG, then stepped downscale) because full-res JPEG reads UI text better than half-res PNG. The applied scale is folded into the returned metadata, so coordinate mapping stays exact; tune with HYPRUSE_MAX_IMAGE_BYTES, or pass scale for a deliberate zoom-out.

By default the screenshot tool writes a PNG under $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/hypruse/ and returns its path; MCP hosts with a file reader (Claude Code's Read) render it natively. This default exists because some hosts (including Claude Code 2.1.x) serialize inline MCP image blocks to base64 text the model cannot see. HYPRUSE_SCREENSHOT_MODE=image switches to inline image content blocks for hosts that render them correctly.

Development

uv sync --group dev
uv run pytest            # unit tests, no compositor needed
uv run pytest -m e2e --override-ini addopts=   # live seat-safe checks
uv run python scripts/e2e_input.py             # supervised: takes the seat ~10s

The input e2e is deliberately manual: it borrows your cursor and keyboard, counts down, proves click/scroll/type delivery by reading the target terminal's screen back over kitty remote control, and restores your focus.

Roadmap

• Click-by-text via OCR (Tesseract): click labels instead of estimated pixels, in any app
• Headless-Hyprland end-to-end tests in CI
• sway / niri support: the wire client already speaks the wlr protocols; what remains is an IPC layer alongside hyprctl.py (contributions welcome)
• AT-SPI element tree: click by accessible name, read GTK/Qt UIs without vision
• Clipboard integration, wait-for-stable capture, discrete-axis scroll
• Multi-monitor and fractional-scaling hardening

Related projects

project	approach	on Hyprland
computer-use-linux	AT-SPI + portals, ydotool fallback	GNOME-first; the RemoteDesktop portal it prefers is not implemented by xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland
hyprmcp	hyprctl wrapper	window management only; no screenshots or input
wayland-mcp	evemu input, VLM analysis	requires elevated setup for input; no Hyprland semantics
Anthropic computer-use-demo	X11 + xdotool in Docker	a sandboxed reference environment rather than a live desktop

License

MIT