AutoControl
AutoControl is a cross-platform GUI automation framework for Python. It drives the mouse and keyboard, finds things on screen (template matching, OCR, the OS accessibility tree, or a vision model), records and replays flows, and runs them from JSON action files — on Windows, macOS, Linux (X11 and Wayland), the BSDs, Android, and iOS.
Every capability ships three ways: a Python API, an AC_* action command usable
from JSON files / CLI / servers, and a GUI tab. Nothing is GUI-only.
Why AutoControl
- One API, seven platforms.
wrapper/platform_wrapper.pypicks the backend at import time; your script does not change between Windows, macOS, X11, and Wayland. - Scriptable without Python. 775
AC_*commands cover the whole feature set, so a JSON file can do anything the library can — including loops, branches, try/catch, macros, and variables. - Headless by default.
import je_auto_controlnever loads Qt. The GUI is an optional extra that wraps the same headless core. - Locate things four ways. Template matching, OCR, the accessibility tree, and a vision-language model — composable through anchor locators and self-healing fallbacks.
- Light dependency floor. The REST server, JSON Schema validator, JWT, TOTP, WebSocket framing, ACME client, USB/IP protocol, and Prometheus metrics are all standard-library implementations. Heavy things are opt-in extras.
Installation
pip install je_auto_control # core
pip install je_auto_control[gui] # + PySide6 desktop app
Optional extras, installed only when you need them:
| Extra | Enables |
|---|---|
gui |
PySide6 desktop application (48 tabs) |
webrtc |
WebRTC remote desktop, USB passthrough (aiortc, av) |
signaling |
Standalone signaling / rendezvous server (fastapi, uvicorn) |
discovery |
mDNS / Zeroconf LAN host discovery |
pdf / office |
PDF and Excel / Word / PowerPoint reading |
fuzzy / locale |
rapidfuzz matching, babel locale parsing |
s3 / audio |
S3 artifact store, system volume control |
Windows on arm64 installs and runs, minus what upstream cannot ship
there: neither opencv-python nor cryptography publishes a win_arm64
wheel. So find_image*, screenshot() (the OpenCV/BGR one — the Pillow
capture still works), the secret vault, action-file encryption, ACME/TLS
and encrypted recording each raise a message naming the missing wheel
instead of failing obscurely. Mouse, keyboard, screen size, window
management, the accessibility tree, the action executor, the MCP/REST/TCP
servers and the GUI all work — measured, not assumed. Every other platform
is unaffected.
Requirements: Python ≥ 3.10 (≥ 3.11 on Windows arm64, which is where CPython's official builds for it start). On Linux, install build prerequisites first:
sudo apt-get install cmake libssl-dev
OCR, VLM, and LLM backends (pytesseract, easyocr, paddleocr, anthropic,
openai) are loaded on demand — install whichever you actually use.
Log file: the library logs to ~/.je_auto_control/logs/AutoControlGUI.log,
created on the first record (importing alone writes nothing) and shared by every
process on the account (appended to, one process id per line, moved to .1
past 10 MB). Set JE_AUTOCONTROL_LOG_FILE to write elsewhere, or to
os.devnull to turn the file off.
60-second quick start
1. As a Python library
import je_auto_control as ac
ac.set_mouse_position(500, 300)
ac.click_mouse("mouse_left")
ac.write("Hello World")
ac.hotkey(["ctrl_l", "s"])
x, y = ac.locate_image_center("save_button.png", detect_threshold=0.9)
ac.click_text("Submit") # OCR
ac.click_accessibility_element(name="OK") # accessibility tree
ac.click_by_description("the green Submit button") # vision model
ac.screenshot("shot.png", screen_region=[0, 0, 800, 600])
2. As a JSON action file — flow.json
[
["AC_set_var", {"name": "user", "value": "alice"}],
["AC_locate_and_click", {"image": "login.png", "mouse_keycode": "mouse_left"}],
["AC_write", {"write_string": "${user}"}],
["AC_retry", {"max_attempts": 3, "body": [
["AC_wait_text", {"target": "Welcome", "timeout": 10}]
]}],
["AC_assert_text", {"text": "Welcome"}],
["AC_generate_html_report", {"html_name": "report"}]
]
je_auto_control run flow.json --var user=bob
je_auto_control run flow.json --dry-run # list the steps without touching the mouse
3. As a desktop app
pip install je_auto_control[gui]
python -c "import je_auto_control; je_auto_control.start_autocontrol_gui()"
Record a flow, edit it in the visual Script Builder, and save it as the same JSON
format the CLI runs. (python -m je_auto_control is the legacy action-file runner — -e, -d,
-c, --execute_str — not the GUI.)
Capability overview
Every row works headlessly. "GUI tab" is where the same feature surfaces in the desktop app; tab commands live in the window's Actions menu.
| Capability | Python API | AC_* command |
GUI tab |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mouse | click_mouse, set_mouse_position, mouse_scroll |
AC_click_mouse |
Auto Click |
| Keyboard | write, hotkey, type_keyboard |
AC_write, AC_hotkey |
Auto Click |
| Screen & pixels | screenshot, screen_size, get_pixel |
AC_screenshot |
Screenshot |
| Image matching | locate_image_center, locate_and_click |
AC_locate_and_click |
Image Detect |
| OCR text | click_text, wait_for_text, read_text_in_region |
AC_click_text, AC_wait_text |
OCR Reader |
| Accessibility tree | find_accessibility_element, click_accessibility_element |
AC_a11y_find, AC_a11y_click |
Accessibility |
| Vision-model locator | locate_by_description, click_by_description |
AC_vlm_locate, AC_vlm_click |
VLM |
| Anchor locator | — | AC_anchor_click, AC_anchor_locate |
— |
| Self-healing locators | self_heal_click, self_heal_locate |
AC_self_heal_click |
Self-Healing |
| Natural-language planner | plan_actions, run_from_description |
AC_llm_plan |
LLM Planner |
| Computer-use agent | AgentLoop, run_agent |
AC_run_agent |
Computer Use |
| Record & replay | record, stop_record |
AC_record, AC_stop_record |
Record |
| JSON scripting | execute_action, execute_files |
all 775 commands | Script, Script Builder |
| Variables & flow control | execute_action_with_vars |
AC_set_var, AC_loop, AC_for_each, AC_try, AC_retry |
Variables |
| Data-driven runs | — | AC_for_each_row (CSV / JSON / SQLite / Excel) |
Data Sources |
| Assertions | assert_text, assert_image |
AC_assert_text + 20 more |
Assertions |
| Test suites | run_suite |
AC_run_suite |
Test Suites |
| Scheduler (interval + cron) | default_scheduler |
— | Scheduler |
| Global hotkeys | default_hotkey_daemon |
— | Hotkeys |
| Event triggers | default_trigger_engine |
AC_email_trigger_add |
Triggers, Webhooks, Email |
| Window management (Windows, macOS, X11) | list_windows, focus_window |
AC_focus_window, AC_snap_window |
Window Manager |
| Clipboard (text + image) | get_clipboard, set_clipboard, get_clipboard_image, set_clipboard_image |
AC_clipboard_get, AC_clipboard_set, AC_clipboard_get_image, AC_clipboard_set_image |
— |
| Remote desktop | RemoteDesktopHost, RemoteDesktopViewer |
AC_start_remote_host, AC_remote_connect |
Remote Desktop |
| USB enumeration & passthrough | list_usb_devices, enable_usb_passthrough |
AC_usb_* (16 commands) |
USB Devices, USB Share |
| Secrets vault | default_secret_manager |
AC_secret_set + ${secrets.NAME} |
Secrets |
| Reports (HTML / JSON / XML) | generate_html_report |
AC_generate_html_report |
Report |
| Run history | — | — | Run History |
| Metrics & tracing | default_metric_registry, render_metrics_text |
— | — |
| Diagnostics | run_diagnostics |
AC_diagnose |
Diagnostics |
| Test-code generation | generate_code |
— | — |
Beyond this table, utils/ holds 310 headless packages covering assertions, resilience,
data quality, i18n auditing, redaction, governance, observability, and more. The full
per-module map is in architecture_explore.md.
Command-line interface
je_auto_control run script.json [--var name=value] [--dry-run]
je_auto_control validate script.json # alias: lint
je_auto_control fmt script.json [--check]
je_auto_control list-commands [--filter mouse] [--json]
je_auto_control record out.json [--duration 5]
je_auto_control codegen script.json --target pytest -o test_flow.py
je_auto_control failure-bundle failure.zip --error "login timed out"
je_auto_control list-jobs
je_auto_control start-server --port 9938 # TCP socket server
je_auto_control start-rest --port 9939 # REST API
je_auto_control version
--var name=value is parsed as JSON when possible (count=10 becomes an int),
otherwise kept as a string. run exits 1 when any action failed (the run
still goes on to the end), so a CI step fails with it. The legacy
python -m je_auto_control -e file.json entry point still works.
Servers and integrations
| Surface | Start it with | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MCP server | je_auto_control_mcp (stdio) or AC_start_mcp_http_server |
678 tools for Claude Desktop / Claude Code / custom tool loops. Speaks the stateless MCP 2026-07-28 beside the initialize-based revisions. Bearer auth, TLS, audit log, rate limit, plugin hot-reload, CI fake backend. |
| REST API | je_auto_control start-rest |
Bearer token, per-IP rate limit + lockout, SQLite audit hook, /metrics, /openapi.json, /docs Swagger UI, /dashboard. |
| TCP socket server | je_auto_control start-server |
Newline-framed JSON action lists. Binds 127.0.0.1 by default. |
| pytest plugin | installed automatically | Fixtures plus a Gherkin step library for pytest-bdd / behave. |
| Language server | python -m autocontrol_lsp.server |
Completion and diagnostics for AC_* action JSON, generated from the live command table. |
| Remote desktop | RemoteDesktopHost / GUI |
TCP, WebSocket, or WebRTC; TOTP, trust list, TURN config, file/clipboard/audio sync. |
All servers bind to 127.0.0.1 unless you opt in explicitly.
How the remote-desktop wire protocol works
Worth knowing before you expose a host, and described nowhere else in the docs. The default transport is length-prefixed framing over raw TCP — no extra dependencies — and it opens with an HMAC-SHA256 challenge/response handshake: a viewer that fails auth is dropped before it is sent a single frame. JPEG frames are encoded at the configured FPS and quality and handed to authenticated viewers through a shared latest-frame slot, so a slow viewer drops frames instead of stalling the rest. Viewer input arrives as JSON and is validated against an allow-list of actions before being applied through the ordinary input wrappers, so a viewer cannot invent new operations.
# Be remoted — start a host and hand the token + port to whoever views you
from je_auto_control import RemoteDesktopHost
host = RemoteDesktopHost(token="hunter2", bind="127.0.0.1",
port=0, fps=10, quality=70)
host.start()
print("listening on", host.port, "viewers:", host.connected_clients)
# Control another machine — connect a viewer and send input
from je_auto_control import RemoteDesktopViewer
viewer = RemoteDesktopViewer(host="10.0.0.5", port=51234, token="hunter2",
on_frame=lambda jpeg: ...)
viewer.connect()
viewer.send_input({"action": "mouse_move", "x": 100, "y": 200})
viewer.disconnect()
Narrow who may connect at all with an IP allow-list (CIDR ranges or exact addresses); peers outside it are rejected during the handshake:
RemoteDesktopHost(token="tok", ip_allowlist=["10.0.0.0/8", "192.168.1.100"])
Platform support
| Platform | Backend | Input | Screen capture | Recording | Window management |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Windows 10 / 11 | Win32 ctypes (+ optional Interception driver) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| macOS 10.15+ | pyobjc / Quartz | ✅ | ✅ | ✅¹ | ✅ |
| Linux X11 | python-Xlib (+ optional uinput) |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Linux Wayland | libei via the desktop portal, or ydotool / wtype + a capture tool | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| FreeBSD / OpenBSD / NetBSD | python-Xlib, the same X11 backend as Linux | ✅² | ⚠️² | ✅² | ✅² |
| Android | adb + uiautomator2 | ✅ | ✅ | — | — |
| iOS | WebDriverAgent / facebook-wda | ✅ | ✅ | — | — |
¹ macOS recording captures through a Quartz event tap and needs Accessibility permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility). Without it recording raises and names the permission rather than returning an empty session.
² The BSDs run the X11 backend unchanged — the same X server, the same
python-Xlib, which is the only dependency input, recording and window
management have. A freebsd CI job drives real input on a real FreeBSD 14 and
reads it back off the X server; OpenBSD and NetBSD take the same code path but
have no CI runner. Screen capture is the exception, and the reason is
packaging rather than the platform: it goes through Pillow/mss and OpenCV, and
opencv-python, pillow and cryptography publish no FreeBSD wheels. Build
those from ports and capture, image matching, OCR and action encryption work
too — import je_auto_control no longer requires any of them.
Wayland input falls back to the ydotool CLI wherever libei is not
reachable, and that fallback needs ydotool 1.0 or newer. Every argument
AutoControl builds arrived in that release; 0.1.x — which is what Debian
bookworm and every current Ubuntu still ship under that name, and Debian
trixie ships not at all — answers the same arguments with exit code 0 and no
events. AutoControl detects it and refuses rather than reporting success for
input it never sent. Arch, Fedora and Debian unstable package 1.0.
That fallback also positions the pointer accurately only where the
compositor's pointer acceleration is off. ydotool mousemove --absolute
sends no absolute event: it drives the cursor into the corner the compositor
clamps to and then moves relative to it, so the compositor accelerates the
move — measured against a real wlroots session, libinput's default profile
travels exactly twice the distance asked for. ydotool's own --help says the
same; AutoControl logs it once per process rather than mispositioning in
silence. Turn acceleration off for the ydotoold device (sway: input type:pointer accel_profile flat and pointer_accel 0), or install
liboeffis so the libei path — absolute at the protocol level — is used.
The factor is the compositor's own setting and no client can read it back, so
only you know whether it is off. JE_AUTOCONTROL_WAYLAND_POINTER_ACCEL=flat
says it is, and moves silently; =strict refuses the move rather than let a
click land somewhere else; leaving it unset keeps the warn-and-move default.
Wayland screen capture needs the tool your compositor supports, because no
single one covers them all: grim on wlroots compositors (sway, Hyprland,
river), gnome-screenshot on GNOME, spectacle on KDE. Install one and every
capture path — screenshots, image and anchor locators, OCR, screen recording,
remote desktop — goes through it. With none of them installed, gdbus is
enough: xdg-desktop-portal is tried last, though it may ask for consent the
first time. Failing that, capture fails loudly with an install hint rather than
returning the blank XWayland root. The screen_capture check in
je_auto_control.api.run_diagnostics() (and the GUI Diagnostics tab) reports
which tier is in use.
One Wayland-only difference to plan around: a capture may contain the mouse
cursor. Nothing here asks for it, but wlroots composites a software cursor
into the output buffer whenever the backend has no cursor plane — which
includes any session run with WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1 — and that buffer is
what screen capture hands back. Windows and X11 never include the pointer, so a
locator, a template match or an OCR read can find a pointer-shaped hole in the
middle of its target here and nowhere else. Wayland does not let a client read
the cursor position, so there is nothing to reliably mask or move around it:
park the pointer away from what you are about to capture. The screen_capture
check reports this as cursor_may_be_captured.
For a setup none of that fits, name your own command — it wins over every
detected tool, and {output} is replaced with a temporary PNG path:
export JE_AUTOCONTROL_WAYLAND_CAPTURE_COMMAND="mycapture --png {output}"
Wayland forbids global input recording for unprivileged clients — set
JE_AUTOCONTROL_LINUX_DISPLAY_SERVER=x11 to record on an X11 session. Window
management works on Windows, macOS (pyobjc) and X11, including XWayland; on a pure
Wayland session, whose protocol hides other clients' windows, list_windows() returns
an empty list and every window action raises AutoControlUnsupportedOperationException
saying why. Opt-in driver-level backends (JE_AUTOCONTROL_WIN32_BACKEND=interception,
JE_AUTOCONTROL_LINUX_BACKEND=uinput, ViGEm virtual gamepad) exist for apps that
ignore synthetic input, and fall back silently when the driver is absent.
Documentation and examples
| Resource | What's in it |
|---|---|
examples/ |
27 self-contained scripts: screenshot + click, OCR, scheduler, remote desktop, agent loop, observability, recording, variables, hotkeys, triggers, reports, MCP, REST, secrets, plugins, computer use, Wayland, cross-host DAGs, chat-ops, pytest/BDD, anchor locators. |
| Read the Docs | Full API reference, English and 中文. |
| architecture_explore.md | Every module's responsibility, layer by layer. |
| docs/CAPABILITY_MATRIX.md | Capability × platform matrix. |
| docs/API_LIFECYCLE.md | Stable-API and deprecation policy. |
| docs/updates/ | Update log: release notes and finished work, one file per month (formerly WHATS_NEW.md). |
| CHANGELOG.md | Compatibility changelog. |
| SECURITY.md | Security policy and reporting. |
Development
git clone https://github.com/Intergration-Automation-Testing/AutoControl.git
cd AutoControl
pip install -r dev_requirements.txt
uv sync # or: reproducible install from the committed uv.lock
python -m pytest test/unit_test/headless # headless unit tests
python -m pytest test/integrated_test/ # cross-module workflows
ruff check je_auto_control/
pylint je_auto_control/
bandit -c pyproject.toml -r je_auto_control/
Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md and
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. Two rules the CI enforces: import je_auto_control must never pull in PySide6, and every feature needs both a headless
API and a GUI surface.
License
MIT License © JE-Chen. See Third_Party_License.md for the licenses of bundled and optional third-party components.
1 maintainer
Release files for je-auto-control 0.0.224
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
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| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Total release size: 3.9 MB
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