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  • Requires: Python >=3.10
  • Provides-Extra: gui , webrtc , signaling , discovery , pdf , office , fuzzy , s3 , locale
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AutoControl

PyPI Python License: MIT Documentation

AutoControl is a cross-platform Python GUI automation framework providing mouse control, keyboard input, image recognition, screen capture, action scripting, and report generation — all through a unified API that works on Windows, macOS, and Linux (X11).

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Table of Contents

What's new (2026-06-22) — GNU gettext Catalog I/O (.po / .mo)

Read/compile the de-facto translation format. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v114_features_doc.rst.

  • parse_po / read_mo / GettextCatalog / parse_po_file / read_mo_file (AC_gettext_translate, AC_gettext_ngettext): the repo pseudo-localises and renders ICU messages but couldn't read GNU gettext .po/.mo. This parses .po (contexts, plurals, the Plural-Forms header via gettext.c2py), compiles a standards-compliant .mo that Python's own gettext.GNUTranslations loads, and exposes gettext/ngettext/pgettext. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — ICU-lite MessageFormat (Plural / Select)

Render count-aware localised messages. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v113_features_doc.rst.

  • format_message / plural_category / ordinal_category (AC_format_message): i18n_test.check_catalog only compares placeholder sets and interpolate is flat ${var} — neither renders "{count, plural, one {# item} other {# items}}". This implements the ICU MessageFormat subset most apps use: select, plural, selectordinal with CLDR categories, exact =N selectors, the # count, offset:, nesting and apostrophe quoting. Injectable plural rules. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Locale-Aware List Formatting

Join items the way a language expects ("A, B, and C"). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v112_features_doc.rst.

  • format_list (AC_format_list): a naive ", ".join gives "A, B, C" with no "and"/"or" and no localisation. This implements the CLDR list-pattern composition with conjunction / disjunction / unit styles and per-locale conjunction words + serial-comma rule (en/es/fr/de/pt) — format_list(["a","b","c"]) → "a, b, and c", locale="es" → "a, b y c". Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Bidirectional-Text QA (Trojan-Source Scan)

Catch invisible Unicode directional formatting (RTL QA + Trojan-source). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v111_features_doc.rst.

  • detect_bidi_issues / bidi_controls / is_bidi_balanced / base_direction / is_trojan_source / strip_bidi_controls / has_bidi_controls (AC_bidi_check, AC_bidi_strip): confusables catches lookalike characters, but bidi controls (LRO/RLO/PDF, isolates, marks) can silently reorder rendered text — an RTL-QA gap and the "Trojan Source" attack (CVE-2021-42574). This lists the controls, checks nesting balance, infers base direction, and flags reordering formatting. Pure-stdlib (unicodedata), deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Readability Scoring

Score how hard text is to read; gate generated copy on a reading grade. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v110_features_doc.rst.

  • flesch_reading_ease / flesch_kincaid_grade / gunning_fog / smog_index / automated_readability_index / readability_report / readability_stats / count_syllables (AC_readability_report): the text utilities canonicalise, match and rank text but never scored difficulty. This adds the classic English readability formulae over a deterministic tokeniser and syllable heuristic, so a test can assert an on-screen message or label stays within a target reading grade. Pure-stdlib (re/math), deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Confusable / Homoglyph Detection

Catch Unicode visual spoofing (IDN-homograph phishing, lookalike labels). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v109_features_doc.rst.

  • confusable_skeleton / is_confusable / detect_homoglyphs / is_mixed_script / scripts_of (AC_confusable_scan, AC_confusable_compare): a Cyrillic "а" is pixel-for-pixel a Latin "a", so "pаypal" reads as "paypal" yet compares unequal. Following Unicode TR39, this folds confusables to a prototype skeleton (strings match when skeletons match) and flags mixed-script tokens. Pure-stdlib (unicodedata), deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Locale-Aware String Collation

Sort strings the way a reader of the language expects. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v108_features_doc.rst.

  • sort_strings / collation_compare / collation_key (AC_collation_sort, AC_collation_compare): Python's default sorted is codepoint order, so "Z" < "a" and "ä" lands far from "a". This Unicode-Collation-lite key orders by base letter, then accent (secondary), then case (tertiary), with an optional tailoring alphabet so Swedish puts å ä ö after z. Pure-stdlib (unicodedata), deterministic across platforms — unlike locale.strxfrm.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Transactional Outbox

Durably buffer events and drain them at-least-once. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v107_features_doc.rst.

  • Outbox (AC_outbox_enqueue, AC_outbox_pending): events.cloud_events posts synchronously with no durability — a crash or network blip loses the event. The outbox persists each event first, then drains pending entries through an injected sink with at-least-once delivery: a sink failure leaves the entry pending for retry until max_attempts, after which it is dead-lettered. save / load keep events across restarts. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Optimistic-Concurrency Versioned Store

Update only if the version is unchanged (compare-and-swap / If-Match). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v106_features_doc.rst.

  • VersionedStore / VersionConflict / if_match_header / check_if_match (AC_cas_put, AC_cas_get): http_conditional used ETag for read caching but never for write concurrency. This local compare-and-swap store puts only when expected_version matches (raising VersionConflict on a stale write), bumps a monotonic version, and bridges to HTTP If-Match — the write side of the ETag story. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Per-Stream Sequence-Gap Detection

Detect missing / out-of-order / duplicate messages by sequence number. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v105_features_doc.rst.

  • SequenceTracker (AC_sequence_observe): nothing tracked per-stream monotonic sequence numbers. observe(stream, seq) classifies each as ok / duplicate / gap (with the missing numbers) / reorder (late arrivals fill gaps), and exposes gaps and high_water. Complements dedup_window. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Time-Windowed Deduplication

Drop duplicate/redelivered messages within a TTL window. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v104_features_doc.rst.

  • DedupWindow (AC_dedup_check): work_queue dedups only in-flight references, so a completed reference re-enqueues and redelivered webhooks reprocess. This sliding-window inbox check_and_marks a message id — True the first time, False for a duplicate within ttl_s — converting at-least-once delivery to exactly-once-in-window. Injectable clock, bounded size. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Idempotency-Key Store

Run a side effect once, replay its response on retries. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v103_features_doc.rst.

  • IdempotencyStore / request_fingerprint / IdempotencyConflict (AC_idempotency_begin, AC_idempotency_complete): RetryPolicy re-executes and work_queue dedups only in-flight refs — nothing cached the first result. This Stripe-style store returns new/in_progress/completed for a key, replays the stored response, raises on a fingerprint conflict, and supports injectable-clock TTL + JSON persistence. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Moving-Average Smoothing

Smooth a noisy value series. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v102_features_doc.rst.

  • sma / wma / ewma / rolling (AC_sma, AC_ewma): stats.describe summarizes a whole sample and timeseries rolls counters into rates, but nothing smoothed a noisy signal. This adds trailing simple/weighted/exponentially-weighted moving averages and a generic rolling reducer, all returning a same-length list aligned to the input timeline. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Single-Series Anomaly Detection

Flag the spike in one live metric series. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v101_features_doc.rst.

  • detect_anomalies / mad_anomalies / zscore_anomalies / ewma_control (AC_detect_anomalies): data_drift is two-batch distribution shift and slo.burn_alerts only thresholds budget burn — neither points at which value in one series is anomalous. This flags outliers via robust MAD (modified z-score), plain z-score, and an EWMA control chart (with an optional in-control baseline) — {index, value, score, is_anomaly} records. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Near-Duplicate Text Detection (SimHash / MinHash)

Fingerprint text to find near-dups at scale. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v100_features_doc.rst.

  • simhash / near_duplicates / minhash_signature / minhash_similarity (AC_simhash, AC_near_duplicates): fuzzy_dedupe is O(n²) pairwise with no stable fingerprint and image_dedup only hashes pixels. This adds the text analog — SimHash (Hamming-distance near-dup clustering) and MinHash (estimated Jaccard) using a fixed blake2b hash for deterministic fingerprints. Pairs with normalize_text. Pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-22) — String-Distance Similarity Metrics

Match typos and reordered tokens. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v99_features_doc.rst.

  • levenshtein / damerau_levenshtein / jaro / jaro_winkler / jaccard / dice / similarity (AC_text_similarity): fuzzy exposed only difflib's gestalt ratio. This adds the edit-distance and token-set metrics it lacks — Jaro-Winkler (standard for short labels), Damerau (transposition-aware), and char-n-gram Jaccard/Dice — plus a unified similarity() that normalizes every metric to [0, 1]. Pairs with normalize_text. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Time-Series Transforms

Turn counters into rates; downsample and resample. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v98_features_doc.rst.

  • ts_rate / ts_irate / ts_increase / ts_delta / ts_downsample / ts_resample (AC_ts_rate, AC_ts_downsample): observability counters store only the current value (no counter→rate anywhere) and cost_telemetry only buckets by day. This adds Prometheus-style reset-aware rate/increase/delta over (timestamp, value) series, tumbling-bucket downsampling (avg/sum/min/max/first/last/count), and grid resampling (last/linear/none). No wall clock — deterministic. Pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Unicode Text Normalisation & Slugify

Canonicalize text before fuzzy/search/OCR matching. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v97_features_doc.rst.

  • normalize_text / deaccent / slugify / normalize_quotes / fold_whitespace (AC_normalize_text, AC_slugify): fuzzy and search_index.tokenize only lowercase and OCR matching only .lower()+substring, so "Café" (NFC) vs "Café" (NFD) vs "cafe" compare unequal. This adds the missing canonicalization layer (NFKC + casefold + whitespace fold, accent stripping, smart-quote mapping, ASCII slugs). Pure-stdlib (unicodedata), deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — JSON-Schema Compatibility Checking

Classify schema changes as backward/forward/full. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v96_features_doc.rst.

  • check_compatibility / diff_schemas / is_backward_compatible / is_forward_compatible / is_full_compatible (AC_check_compatibility): we could validate against and generate JSON Schemas but couldn't answer "will an old consumer still read new data?". This classifies changes (added-required field, removed field, narrowed/widened type, enum add/remove) under Confluent/Avro backward/forward/full rules over the object subset. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Typed Configuration Schema

Validate config into a typed object. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v95_features_doc.rst.

  • ConfigSchema / ConfigField / validate_config / coerce (AC_validate_config): assets._coerce coerces one value and json_schema validates structure, but nothing bound a resolved config dict into a typed object with required-field enforcement and choice constraints. This coerces types (str/int/float/bool), applies defaults, enforces required/choices, and returns {ok, config, errors} — a stdlib pydantic-settings analog. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — OTLP/JSON Span Export

Export spans the way a collector ingests them. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v94_features_doc.rst.

  • spans_to_otlp / attributes_to_otlp / write_otlp (AC_spans_to_otlp): agent_trace.to_otel returned flat dicts that aren't valid OTLP/JSON (no resourceSpans/scopeSpans nesting, times not as uint64 strings). This wraps spans in the proper envelope with hex IDs, uint64-string times, and OTLP KeyValue attribute encoding — what an OpenTelemetry collector's file exporter reads. Pairs with trace_context. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Canonical Log Lines & Structured Logging

One wide event per run, with trace correlation. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v93_features_doc.rst.

  • CanonicalLogLine / JSONLogFormatter / bind_trace_context (AC_canonical_log): logging_instance emits a fixed pipe-delimited string with no JSON and no trace/span fields. This adds a Stripe-style canonical log line (field accumulator + timer with injectable clock) and a JSON logging.Formatter that carries trace_id/span_id — the log-trace correlation counterpart to trace_context. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Conditional HTTP Requests & Cache Validators

Skip re-downloading unchanged resources (ETag / 304). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v92_features_doc.rst.

  • store_validators / conditioned_call / is_fresh / parse_cache_control / is_not_modified (AC_parse_cache_control, AC_store_validators): http_request never sent If-None-Match/If-Modified-Since nor read Cache-Control, so every poll re-downloaded. This extracts validators, parses Cache-Control (max-age/no-store/…), decides freshness by an explicit age, conditions the next request, and detects 304 Not Modified. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Cookie Jar (HTTP Session Carry)

Carry a session across HTTP calls. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v91_features_doc.rst.

  • CookieJar / parse_set_cookie (AC_cookie_header, AC_parse_set_cookie): http_request is stateless — no session cookies persisted across calls, so a login-then-call flow couldn't carry a session headlessly. This parses Set-Cookie headers into a jar, builds the Cookie request header, and saves/loads the jar as JSON (cookies cleared on Max-Age<=0/empty). Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — HTTP Content Negotiation & Decompression

Build Accept headers and decode gzip/deflate. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v90_features_doc.rst.

  • build_accept / build_accept_encoding / parse_quality_values / decode_body / negotiated_call (AC_decode_body, AC_parse_quality_values): urllib/http_request never set Accept-Encoding nor decoded Content-Encoding, so compressed bodies arrived raw. This adds Accept/Accept-Encoding builders, a q-value parser (sorted by quality), and gzip/deflate (incl. raw deflate) decoding. Brotli excluded (not stdlib). Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — multipart/form-data Build & Parse

Build file-upload bodies. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v89_features_doc.rst.

  • build_multipart / parse_multipart / MultipartFile (AC_build_multipart, AC_parse_multipart): http_request sent only JSON/raw — there was no file upload, and stdlib cgi (which parsed multipart) was removed in 3.13. This assembles a multipart/form-data body from text fields and files with an injectable boundary (byte-stable), and parses one back into {fields, files}. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Secret Redaction for Config & Logs

Mask secrets before logging or exporting. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v88_features_doc.rst.

  • redact_config / redact_secret_text (AC_redact_config, AC_redact_secret_text): utils/redaction only blurs screenshots and secrets_scan only detects — neither returned a masked copy. This reuses the secrets_scan detector (key-name patterns, AWS/bearer formats, high-entropy) to return a redacted deep copy of a config structure, and to mask secret-looking tokens in a free-text log line (preserving surrounding words). Vault refs (${secrets.*}) are left intact. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — RFC 8288 Link Header & Pagination

Parse Link headers and follow rel="next". Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v87_features_doc.rst.

  • parse_link_header / next_url / links_by_rel / paginate (AC_parse_link_header, AC_next_url): paginated REST APIs return Link: <...>; rel="next" but nothing parsed it. This parses the header (quoted values with commas, multiple links), indexes by relation, and paginate walks rel="next" over an injected fetch (transport/cassette) up to max_pages. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — Referential Integrity Checks

Foreign-key, unique, accepted-values and row-count checks across tables. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v86_features_doc.rst.

  • check_foreign_key / check_unique_key / check_accepted_values / check_row_count (AC_check_foreign_key, AC_check_unique_key, AC_check_accepted_values, AC_check_row_count): validate_rows is intra-row, single-table (its unique only dedupes within one batch). This adds dbt-style generic checks — parent/child foreign keys across two tables, single/composite key uniqueness, accepted-values, and row-count bounds — over rows from load_rows/query_sqlite. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-22) — URI-Scheme Value References

Store pointers, not secrets, in config. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v85_features_doc.rst.

  • resolve_ref / resolve_refs_in / is_ref / RefResolver (AC_resolve_ref, AC_resolve_refs): interpolate hardcoded only ${secrets.NAME} and AssetStore refs were vault-name-only — there was no general read-time indirection. This resolves env://VAR, file://path (with an optional base_dir traversal guard), and secret://name (injectable resolver or the governance broker), and walks nested structures resolving every reference. Env reader / secret resolver / base dir are injectable. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — W3C Baggage Propagation

Carry cross-cutting key-value context across HTTP. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v84_features_doc.rst.

  • Baggage / parse_baggage / format_baggage / inject_baggage / extract_baggage (AC_baggage_parse, AC_baggage_format): trace_context carried trace/span identity but nothing propagated cross-cutting context (run_id/tenant/experiment). This implements the W3C Baggage header — a percent-encoded key=value list — with an immutable Baggage (set/remove return new instances) and case-insensitive inject/extract over a headers dict. Pairs with trace_context. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Dataset Diff (Row-Set Change Report)

Diff two tabular extracts by key. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v83_features_doc.rst.

  • diff_rows / cell_changes / summarize_diff (AC_diff_rows, AC_cell_changes): the framework diffed screens/snapshots but had nothing to diff two tabular row-sets by key. This keys both sides and reports {added, removed, changed, unchanged} (changed carries {key, old, new}), expands per-cell {key, column, old, new} changes, and counts each bucket. Supports composite keys; last-write-wins on duplicates. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Distribution Drift Detection

Check whether today's data is shaped like the baseline. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v82_features_doc.rst.

  • psi / ks_two_sample / categorical_drift / detect_drift (AC_detect_drift, AC_categorical_drift): stats had A/B experiment tests but no Population Stability Index and no KS two-sample test for reference-vs-current distributions. This adds PSI (quantile-binned log-ratio), the KS statistic with a Kolmogorov p-value, and a categorical chi-square + total-variation summary — pairing with data_profile. detect_drift gives a one-call {psi, drifted, ks} verdict. Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Layered Configuration Resolver

Compose config with defaults < file < env < CLI precedence. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v81_features_doc.rst.

  • LayeredConfig / deep_merge / SourceTrace (AC_resolve_config, AC_explain_config): json_patch.merge_patch merges two docs, config_sync is last-write-wins, AssetStore is flat-per-env — none compose an ordered precedence stack with deep merge or report which layer won each key. add_layer(name, mapping, priority) then resolve() deep-merges (nested dicts recursively, scalars/lists replaced); explain("db.host") names the winning layer. Layers are caller-supplied (env passed in, never os.environ implicitly). Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Server-Sent Events (SSE) Client Parser

Consume text/event-stream responses. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v80_features_doc.rst.

  • parse_event_stream / SSEParser / SSEEvent (AC_parse_sse): the MCP HTTP transport emits SSE, but nothing consumed it — a streaming LLM/agent/chatops endpoint left http_request with a raw blob. This implements the WHATWG event-stream parsing algorithm (event/data/id/retry, comments, the leading-space rule, blank-line dispatch) with an incremental feed for chunks and a one-shot parse_event_stream. Pure-stdlib, fully deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Dotenv (.env) Parsing

Read 12-factor .env files into config. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v79_features_doc.rst.

  • parse_dotenv / load_dotenv / dotenv_values / dump_dotenv (AC_parse_dotenv, AC_load_dotenv): load_vars_from_json ingested flat JSON but nothing read the de-facto .env file. This parses KEY=VALUE lines (export prefixes, single/double quoting, \n/\t escapes, inline comments) into a plain dict — no python-dotenv dependency. The loader merges into a caller-supplied mapping rather than mutating os.environ, so it stays safe and deterministic. Pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-21) — RFC 9457 Problem Details Parsing

Read standardized API errors out of HTTP responses. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v78_features_doc.rst.

  • parse_problem / is_problem / raise_for_problem / ProblemDetails (AC_parse_problem): http_request returned a non-2xx body unparsed, so flows and assert_http had no structured way to read a standardized API error. This parses the RFC 9457 application/problem+json document — registered type/title/status/detail/instance members plus vendor extensions — returning None for non-problem responses or raising HttpProblemError. Pure-stdlib, fully deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Data Profiling & Schema Inference

Survey a row-set and propose a validation schema. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v77_features_doc.rst.

  • profile_rows / infer_schema (AC_profile_rows, AC_infer_schema): validate_rows consumes a hand-written schema and stats.describe summarizes one numeric list — nothing surveyed a whole row-set. This profiles each column (null fraction, cardinality, inferred type, top values, numeric min/max/mean) and infers a validate_rows-compatible schema (required where non-null, unique where distinct, numeric bounds) — the profiler step that feeds the existing validator. Pure-stdlib, fully deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — W3C Trace Context Propagation

Correlate spans and logs across HTTP boundaries. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v76_features_doc.rst.

  • SpanContext / new_root_context / child_context / inject_context / extract_context (AC_trace_inject, AC_trace_extract): the existing tracer and agent_trace spans carried no IDs, so a span on one side of an HTTP call couldn't be correlated with the work it triggered on the other. This implements the W3C Trace Context standard — generate/parse/propagate traceparent + tracestate headers (version-00, rejects malformed/all-zero IDs), with an injectable RNG for deterministic IDs in tests. Pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-21) — HTTP Record & Replay Cassette

Re-run API flows in CI with no live server. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v75_features_doc.rst.

  • Cassette / CassetteMissError (AC_http_replay): the HTTP client hardcoded its urllib transport, so a flow driving a real API couldn't be re-run offline. The client now exposes a build_call / urllib_transport seam, and this adds a VCR-style cassette — replay returns a recorded response for a matching request (pure, no network — the CI-valuable half), recording_transport is a thin pass-through over the live transport. Match on method/url (optionally body); save/load JSON cassettes. Pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Bulkhead & Rate-Limit Headers

Cap concurrency, honor server back-off. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v74_features_doc.rst.

  • Bulkhead / next_delay / parse_retry_after / parse_ratelimit (AC_bulkhead_run, AC_retry_after): resilience recovers and rate_limit paces, but nothing capped simultaneous in-flight calls (a slow dependency could exhaust every worker) and the HTTP client ignored Retry-After/RateLimit-*. This adds a bulkhead (bounded-concurrency permit that sheds load with BulkheadFullError when full) and parsers for the server's advised delay (delta-seconds or HTTP-date). Non-blocking permit counting → deterministic, no threads in tests. Pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Streaming Latency Percentiles

Mergeable p99 for load/soak runs. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v73_features_doc.rst.

  • LatencyDigest / exact_percentiles (AC_percentiles): stats.percentile needs the full sorted list; this adds a HdrHistogram-style digest with O(1) record, bounded memory (significant-figure buckets), and merge for cross-shard aggregation — the property you need for a correct aggregate p99 from per-worker results. exact_percentiles covers the small-set case (arbitrary quantiles). Pure-stdlib math.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Service-Level Objectives (SLO)

SLI, error budget and burn-rate alerts. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v72_features_doc.rst.

  • evaluate_slo / burn_rate / burn_alerts / default_burn_rules (AC_evaluate_slo, AC_burn_alerts): the framework emitted raw signals but had no SLO layer. This computes the SLI over outcome records ([{timestamp, ok}]), the error budget against a target, and the multi-window multi-burn-rate alerts from the Google SRE workbook (page 14.4×@1h, 6×@6h; ticket 1×@3d — firing only when both windows exceed the threshold). Records are plain data, clock injectable, fully deterministic. Pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Chaos Experiments

Inject faults, verify the system holds. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v71_features_doc.rst.

  • ChaosExperiment / run_experiment / Probe / latency_fault / exception_fault (AC_run_chaos): resilience recovers from failures; this causes them and checks a steady-state hypothesis still holds (Chaos Toolkit lifecycle — verify before, inject faults, verify after, roll back LIFO). Probes/faults/rollbacks are callables; the clock/RNG/sleep are injectable so experiments run deterministically in tests with no real failures or sleeping. AC_run_chaos drives an action-list spec. Pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-21) — JSON Contract & Snapshot Matching

Match, diff and snapshot JSON payloads. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v70_features_doc.rst.

  • match_json / diff_json / normalize_json / snapshot_json (AC_match_json, AC_diff_json): json_schema validates against an authored schema and jsonpath extracts, but nothing matched two payloads with relaxed rules or diffed them path-by-path. This adds contract/snapshot matching — partial (subset), match_type (Pact-style like), ignore volatile paths — returning {path, kind} mismatches (missing/extra/changed), plus golden-master snapshot_json. Composes with json_schema + json_patch; pure-stdlib.

What's new (2026-06-21) — SLSA Build Provenance

Attest what was built. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v69_features_doc.rst.

  • build_provenance / subject_for / verify_provenance / write_provenance (AC_build_provenance, AC_verify_provenance): the framework signs action files and inventories deps (SBOM) but couldn't attest what was produced by which build. This adds an in-toto v1 Statement with a SLSA v1 provenance predicate over file sha256 digests, and a verifier that re-hashes the artifacts (tamper → mismatch). Complements action_signing + sbom; pure-stdlib hashlib+json, fully offline.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Feature Flags

Toggle behavior with targeting & rollout. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v68_features_doc.rst.

  • FlagStore / evaluate_flag / is_enabled / assign_variant (AC_evaluate_flag, AC_flag_enabled): decision_table is one-shot DMN and ab_locator is locator A/B — neither is a product flag store with sticky % rollout. This adds an OpenFeature-shaped engine: targeting rules (eq/in/semver_*…), weighted variants, kill switch, and consistent-hash bucketing (sha256(key.salt.context_key)) so a subject is sticky. Returns {value, variant, reason} (TARGETING_MATCH/SPLIT/DISABLED/ERROR). Pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Text Diff, Patch & Three-Way Merge

Apply and merge text diffs. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v67_features_doc.rst.

  • unified_diff / apply_unified / three_way_merge (AC_unified_diff, AC_apply_unified, AC_three_way_merge): difflib generates a unified diff but the stdlib can't apply one, and there was no three-way merge. This adds the missing applier (walks @@ hunks, verifies context, raises on mismatch) and a line-based three-way merge (non-overlapping edits combine cleanly; overlapping ones emit <<<<<<< conflict markers). Complements json_patch (structured JSON); pure-stdlib difflib.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Calendar Recurrence Rules (RRULE)

Schedule "every 2nd Tuesday". Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v66_features_doc.rst.

  • parse_rrule / occurrences / next_occurrence (AC_rrule_occurrences, AC_rrule_next): the scheduler's cron is 5-field interval-only — it can't express "every 2nd Tuesday", "the last weekday of the month", or "every weekday for 10 occurrences". This adds an RFC 5545 (iCalendar) RRULE parser + occurrence expander supporting FREQ/INTERVAL/COUNT/UNTIL/BYDAY (with ordinals like 2MO/-1FR)/BYMONTHDAY/BYMONTH/BYSETPOS/WKST. Pure-stdlib datetime+calendar, injectable clock for deterministic next_occurrence.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Statistics & A/B Significance

Decide whether a difference is real. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v65_features_doc.rst.

  • describe / percentile / two_proportion_z_test / welch_t_test / cohens_d / chi_square_2x2 (AC_describe_stats, AC_ab_significance): ab_locator ranks by raw success rate and run_history stores durations, but nothing computed percentiles or significance. This adds the analysis layer — summary stats + p50/p90/p95/p99, a two-proportion z-test (with CI), Welch's t-test (exact t-distribution p-value via the incomplete beta — no SciPy), Cohen's d, and a 2×2 chi-square. The normal CDF is exact via math.erf; validated against textbook values (incl. the chi²=z² identity). Pure-stdlib math+statistics.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Full-Text Search (BM25)

Rank a document corpus by relevance. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v64_features_doc.rst.

  • SearchIndex / search_documents / tokenize (AC_search_documents, ac_search_documents): fuzzy is pairwise and skill_library matches substrings alphabetically — neither ranks a corpus by relevance. This adds an inverted-index search ranked with Okapi BM25 (k1=1.5, b=0.75, IDF = ln(1+(N−df+0.5)/(df+0.5))) or TF-IDF, so a rare term out-ranks a common one, term frequency saturates, and long docs are normalized down. Incremental add/remove, optional stop-words, deterministic ranking. Pure-stdlib math+collections+re — no database.

What's new (2026-06-21) — JSON Pointer, Patch & Merge Patch

Address, diff and patch JSON. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v63_features_doc.rst.

  • resolve_pointer / make_patch / apply_patch / merge_patch / make_merge_patch (AC_resolve_pointer, AC_apply_json_patch, AC_make_json_patch, AC_merge_patch): jsonpath is read-only and approval compares whole artifacts — nothing could address one location, compute a structured delta, or apply a partial update. This adds the three IETF primitives — JSON Pointer (RFC 6901), JSON Patch (RFC 6902, all six ops, atomic apply), and JSON Merge Patch (RFC 7386, null deletes) — for config-drift detection, partial updates, HTTP PATCH bodies, and golden-master deltas. Pure-stdlib json+copy, validated against the RFC test vectors.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Client-Side Rate Limiting

Stay under API quotas. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v62_features_doc.rst.

  • TokenBucket / SlidingWindowLimiter / throttle (AC_rate_limit, ac_rate_limit): RetryPolicy/CircuitBreaker recover from failures but nothing shaped the rate of calls. This adds a token bucket (smooth rate + burst), a sliding-window limiter (Cloudflare's O(1) weighted counter), and a leading-edge throttle decorator. Every limiter takes an injectable clock (and acquire a sleep) so it's fully deterministic in CI with no real delays. AC_rate_limit gates an action against a named bucket, returning {acquired, tokens, wait}.

What's new (2026-06-21) — JSON Web Tokens (JWT)

Mint and verify bearer tokens for the APIs you automate. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v61_features_doc.rst.

  • encode_jwt / decode_jwt / ClaimsPolicy (AC_jwt_encode, AC_jwt_decode): the framework had HMAC file signing and an ACME-bound RS256 JWS, but nothing to mint/verify a compact bearer JWT. This adds a pure-stdlib HS256/384/512 codec with full claim validation (exp/nbf/aud/iss, injectable clock) that drops straight into http_request's bearer auth. Safe by default: rejects alg:none, enforces an algorithm allowlist (anti-confusion), and compares signatures with hmac.compare_digest. AC_jwt_decode returns {ok, claims} so flows can branch without raising.

What's new (2026-06-21) — License Policy Gate

Flag disallowed dependency licenses. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v60_features_doc.rst.

  • evaluate_sbom / evaluate_license / normalize_spdx / license_findings_to_sarif (AC_check_licenses, ac_check_licenses): the SBOM recorded each dependency's license name but never judged it. This normalizes license strings to SPDX ids and evaluates them against an allowlist/denylist (with a built-in DEFAULT_COPYLEFT set), understanding SPDX expressions (OR = choice, AND = all), then bridges violations into SARIF (denied→error, unknown→warning). Pure-stdlib, fully offline — the license-compliance lane beside the OSV vulnerability lane.

What's new (2026-06-21) — OpenVEX Vulnerability Triage

Suppress the vulns that don't affect you. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v59_features_doc.rst.

  • vex_statement / build_vex / apply_vex (AC_apply_vex, ac_apply_vex): the OSV scanner surfaces every known CVE forever — there was no way to record "we checked, this one doesn't affect us". This authors OpenVEX 0.2.0 statements and applies them to the scanner's findings: not_affected/fixed suppress a finding, affected/under_investigation annotate it. Statements join on the vuln id or an alias, optionally product-scoped; not_affected requires a justification or impact statement. Pure-stdlib; chains directly after AC_scan_vulns.

What's new (2026-06-21) — Dependency Vulnerability Scanning (OSV)

Match the SBOM against known CVEs. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v58_features_doc.rst.

  • scan_components / match_package / is_affected / findings_to_sarif (AC_scan_vulns, ac_scan_vulns): build_sbom only inventoried dependencies and to_sarif only exported findings — nothing ever produced a vulnerability finding. This matches the SBOM's (ecosystem, name, version) components against an OSV advisory database (sweeping introduced/fixed/last_affected ranges, PEP-503 name normalization, severity→SARIF level) and bridges results into the existing SARIF exporter for GitHub/Azure DevOps code scanning. The advisory DB is injected as data (offline, deterministic); the live osv.dev query is an optional fetcher seam. Pure-stdlib re.

What's new (2026-06-21) — JSON Schema Validation

Validate nested JSON against a real schema. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v57_features_doc.rst.

  • validate_json / is_valid / assert_schema (AC_validate_json, ac_validate_json): the framework only generated JSON Schema and data_quality is a flat per-column checker — neither could validate a nested API request/response body. This adds the consumer: a JSON Schema (Draft 2020-12 subset) validator that reports every violation as {path, keyword, message} (e.g. $.age maximum). Covers type (incl. integral-float integer), enum/const, numeric/string bounds, array & object keywords, allOf/anyOf/oneOf/not, boolean schemas and local $ref. Pure-stdlib re; pairs with json_query and the http_request helper.

What's new (2026-06-20) — SARIF 2.1.0 Findings Export

Unify scanner findings for GitHub code scanning. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v56_features_doc.rst.

  • to_sarif / write_sarif / make_finding / from_lint_issues / from_audit_findings (AC_export_sarif, ac_export_sarif): the framework's findings producers (action-lint, secrets scan, WCAG audit, guardrail) had no common export. This builds a SARIF 2.1.0 document — with auto rule catalog and stable partialFingerprints for cross-run dedupe — that GitHub/Azure DevOps code scanning ingests as line-anchored alerts. Pure-stdlib json+hashlib; adapters normalize the existing lint/audit shapes.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Text PII Detection & Redaction

Mask PII in text before it leaks. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v55_features_doc.rst.

  • detect_pii / redact_pii_text (AC_detect_pii / AC_redact_pii, ac_*): image redaction existed but text (OCR, clipboard, LLM I/O, logs) had no string-level PII handling. This detects emails / phones / SSNs / credit cards / IPv4 / IBANs over plain text and redacts with label / mask / partial / hash. Overlapping spans dedupe (a card isn't also a phone); patterns are backtracking-safe. Pure-stdlib re+hashlib.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Self-Healing Locator Write-Back

Persist corrected locators so heals aren't forgotten. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v54_features_doc.rst.

  • RepairStore / repair_from_heal (AC_repair_record / AC_repair_resolved / AC_repair_pending / AC_repair_approve, ac_*): runtime self-healing previously threw away the corrected location, so every run re-healed. This records the corrected locator (coords/VLM description/method) from a heal, auto-applies it when confidence >= auto_threshold (default 0.9) or queues a reviewable suggestion, and resolved(key) returns the learned fix for reuse. Closes the heal→durable-fix loop; pure-stdlib, fully testable.

What's new (2026-06-20) — DMN-Style Decision Tables

Externalize branching into reviewable rule tables. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v53_features_doc.rst.

  • evaluate_table / DecisionTable (AC_decision_table, ac_decision_table): replaces nested AC_if_var chains with rows of conditions -> outputs and a hit policy (UNIQUE/FIRST/PRIORITY/COLLECT). Cell conditions are wildcard / literal / {op, value} using the executor's standard comparators (reused, not duplicated). Pure-stdlib, fully testable; the DMN way to keep business rules data-driven.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Saga / Compensating Rollback

Undo completed steps when a later one fails. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v52_features_doc.rst.

  • Saga / run_saga (AC_run_saga, ac_run_saga): records a compensating action per step; on any failure runs the completed steps' compensations in LIFO order — the durable-transaction primitive AC_try (single-block) couldn't provide. Forward actions/compensations are callables (or JSON action lists), so it's fully unit-tested with no side effects; compensation is best-effort (a failing undo is logged, rollback continues). Returns {ok, completed, compensated, failed_step, error}.

What's new (2026-06-20) — JSONPath Querying

Query API/DB JSON with wildcards, recursion, filters. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v51_features_doc.rst.

  • json_query / json_query_one / json_extract (AC_json_query / AC_json_extract, ac_*): the executor's path walker only split on . and indexed — this adds a JSONPath subset ($, .key, [n]/[-n], */[*], .. recursive descent, [?(@.k op v)] filters) over parsed JSON, so array-bearing API/DB responses are easy to extract from. json_extract runs a {key: path} mapping into a flat dict. Pure-stdlib re; the path engine AC_http_to_var and DB-row flows were missing.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Multi-Channel Webhook Notifications

Alert Teams/Discord/Slack/webhook. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v50_features_doc.rst.

  • notify_webhook / WebhookChannel (AC_notify_webhook, ac_notify_webhook): notify was desktop-toast only and ChatOps shipped Slack only — this sends to Slack / Discord / Microsoft Teams / raw webhooks, building the transport-shaped payload (Slack & Teams MessageCard use text, Discord uses content) and POSTing via the egress-guarded HTTP client. The poster transport is injectable (or set_default_poster), so sending is unit-tested with no network.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Outbound CloudEvents Emitter

Emit run/automation events as CloudEvents. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v49_features_doc.rst.

  • to_cloudevent / EventEmitter / post_cloudevent (AC_emit_event, ac_emit_event): the repo could receive webhooks but not emit events — this wraps run-lifecycle/assertion/failure data in a CloudEvents 1.0 (CNCF) envelope and optionally POSTs it over the egress-guarded HTTP client (interop with Knative, Azure Event Grid, iPaaS, generic webhooks). The sink/poster transport is injectable, so emission is unit-tested with no network.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Environment-Scoped Typed Asset Store

Per-environment typed config + credential refs. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v48_features_doc.rst.

  • AssetStore / active_environment (AC_set_asset / AC_get_asset / AC_list_assets, ac_*): the orchestrator "Assets/lockers" pillar — centrally-managed config values that differ by environment (dev/staging/prod) and carry a type (text/int/bool/credential). get coerces to the declared type and falls back to the default env; credential assets hold a secret reference that resolve turns into the real value via an injected resolver (Python-only, so secrets never enter get/executor records). Fills the gap the secret vault (secret-only) and config-sync (whole-blob) left.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Task / Process Mining (Automation-Candidate Discovery)

Discover what to automate from recorded action logs. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v47_features_doc.rst.

  • mine_action_log / find_repeated_sequences / directly_follows / rank_automation_candidates (AC_mine_actions, ac_mine_actions): mines a recorded action log for frequent, repeatable command n-grams, builds a directly-follows graph, and ranks automation candidates by count × length — the RPA "task mining" pillar AutoControl recorded data for but never analysed. Pure-stdlib; operates on the existing action-list shape; a candidate that recurs and spans several steps is a strong "extract into a skill" signal.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Stuck-Loop Guard (Agent Loop Progress Detection)

Catch agents stuck in no-progress loops. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v46_features_doc.rst.

  • LoopGuard / digest_result (AC_loop_guard_observe / AC_loop_guard_reset, ac_*): the top computer-use failure mode is an agent repeating an action with no effect — and the model can't see its own loop. LoopGuard watches the (tool, args, result) stream and flags repeat (same call N times), ping_pong (A-B-A-B), and no_op (observation digest unchanged), escalating ok→warn→critical by run length. Complements the step/time budget and offline trajectory eval; pure-stdlib, deterministic.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Coordinate-Space Mapping (Model Grid ⇄ Physical Pixels)

Translate computer-use model clicks to real pixels. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v45_features_doc.rst.

  • CoordinateSpace / xga_space / normalized_space / downscale_png (AC_to_physical / AC_to_model, ac_*): computer-use/VLA models click in a fixed grid (Anthropic downscales to XGA; Gemini returns a 1000×1000 grid), not physical pixels. This maps both ways (round + clamp), xga_space aspect-preserves without upscaling, and downscale_png resizes a screenshot to the model's input size (Pillow, already core). Pure-arithmetic mapping — unit-tested without a model/GPU.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Voice-Command Router

Trigger flows hands-free from recognized speech. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v44_features_doc.rst.

  • VoiceRouter (AC_voice_register / AC_voice_dispatch / AC_voice_list / AC_voice_clear, ac_*): map spoken trigger phrases to AC_* action lists; feed it recognized text and it runs the closest registered command (phrase matching reuses the fuzzy matcher, so "save the file" fires "save file"). Speech-to-text is out of scope and injectable — the router takes text and a recognizer/runner callable, so routing is fully unit-tested without audio or any speech dependency (a real Vosk/mic recogniser plugs into listen_once).

What's new (2026-06-20) — Locale-Aware Number, Currency & Date Parsing

Parse localized numbers/currency/dates. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v43_features_doc.rst.

  • parse_decimal / parse_number / format_decimal / format_currency / format_date (AC_parse_decimal / AC_parse_number / AC_format_decimal / AC_format_currency / AC_format_date, ac_*): OCR/UI text like "1.234,56" (de_DE) parses correctly to 1234.56 via Babel's CLDR data, and values format back per-locale. babel is an optional [locale] extra, imported lazily; functional tests run under importorskip (wiring/facade always verified).

What's new (2026-06-20) — Perceptual-Hash Image Dedupe

Collapse near-identical screenshots. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v42_features_doc.rst.

  • average_hash / dhash / hamming_distance / images_similar / dedupe_images (AC_image_hash / AC_dedupe_images, ac_*): perceptual hashing maps visually similar images to close fingerprints, so near-duplicate frames in a recording or step report cluster by Hamming distance and collapse to one representative. Uses Pillow (already core — no extra dep); the dedupe/compare logic is pure Python with an injectable hasher, so clustering is unit-tested without any image and the real Pillow path under importorskip.

What's new (2026-06-20) — S3-Compatible Artifact Store

Push run artifacts to object storage. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v41_features_doc.rst.

  • S3ArtifactStore (AC_s3_upload / AC_s3_download / AC_s3_list / AC_s3_delete, ac_*): upload/download/list/delete reports, screenshots, and recordings against any S3-compatible bucket (AWS S3, MinIO, R2). boto3 is an optional [s3] extra and the client is injectable, so the store's logic — and the executor path — are fully unit-tested with a fake client (no boto3/network); the live AWS path is honestly noted as CI-unverifiable. The whole API is relative to the store prefix. A module-level default store backs the commands.

What's new (2026-06-20) — Fuzzy String Matching & Dedupe

Match noisy OCR/UI text robustly. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v40_features_doc.rst.

  • fuzzy_ratio / fuzzy_best_match / fuzzy_matches / fuzzy_dedupe (AC_fuzzy_ratio / AC_fuzzy_best_match / AC_fuzzy_dedupe, ac_*): score similarity (0..1), pick the closest candidate from a list, or collapse near-duplicates — so a flow can act on "the button that looks like Submit" rather than an exact label. The default backend is stdlib difflib (zero extra deps); the optional [fuzzy] extra adds rapidfuzz for speed, with scores normalised either way. ignore_case and score_cutoff supported.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Video Step-Overlay Report

Caption screenshots into a walkthrough video. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v39_features_doc.rst.

  • write_step_video (AC_write_step_video, ac_write_step_video): turns per-step screenshots into a shareable video where each frame is held for a few seconds with its caption and a pass/fail colour banner burned in. The assembly logic (build_overlay_plan / render_overlay_frame) is separated from OpenCV via injectable loader/drawer/writer_factory hooks — unit-testable with fakes and no cv2/numpy dependency; the real path lazily imports cv2 only when those hooks are absent. The visual companion to the HTML/JSON reports.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Agent Observability (GenAI OpenTelemetry Spans)

OTel GenAI-convention spans for LLM runs. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v38_features_doc.rst.

  • AgentTrace (AC_trace_record / AC_trace_summary / AC_trace_export / AC_trace_reset, ac_*): records spans whose attributes follow the OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic conventions (gen_ai.operation.name, gen_ai.system, gen_ai.request.model, gen_ai.usage.input_tokens/output_tokens, gen_ai.tool.name) and the "{operation} {model}" span name. to_otel() drops into an OTLP exporter; summary() rolls up token cost and latency; an operation() context manager times live blocks and marks errors. Pure-stdlib (no opentelemetry dep), injectable clock; pairs with trajectory evaluation (record here, score there).

What's new (2026-06-19) — Compliance Control Report (SOC2 / ISO 27001)

Map governance evidence to named controls. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v37_features_doc.rst.

  • build_compliance_report (AC_compliance_report, ac_compliance_report): the framework already ships the controls an auditor cares about — egress allowlist, JIT credential leases, maker-checker approval, secrets scanner, audit logging, CycloneDX SBOM. This maps a flat evidence mapping to SOC2 (CC6.1/CC6.3/CC6.8/CC7.3/CC8.1) and ISO 27001 (A.5.23/A.8.16/A.8.30) controls, each marked satisfied/gap/not_assessed, and renders JSON or a standalone HTML table. The capstone of the governance set — a reporting aid, not a certification.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Agent Trajectory Evaluation

Score an agent run against a rubric. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v36_features_doc.rst.

  • evaluate_trajectory (AC_evaluate_trajectory, ac_evaluate_trajectory): scores a recorded trajectory (ordered {action, args, observation} steps) against a declarative rubric — required_actions (+ordered), forbidden_actions, max_steps, success_contains. Returns {passed, score, steps, checks} where score is the fraction of applicable checks passed and each check pinpoints a violated expectation. A deterministic, dependency-free signal for agent regression testing; the rubric is plain data so it lives in JSON action files and travels over MCP.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Approval Testing (Golden-Master Baselines)

Lock outputs against a human-approved baseline. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v35_features_doc.rst.

  • verify_artifact / approve_artifact (AC_verify_artifact / AC_approve_artifact / AC_pending_artifacts, ac_*): golden-master / snapshot testing for any artifact (text, JSON, OCR output, screenshot bytes). verify_artifact compares produced content to <name>.approved.<ext>; a mismatch or missing baseline writes <name>.received.<ext> for review and fails, and approve_artifact promotes a reviewed received file to the baseline. Complements pixel diffing with a review-gated baseline you commit alongside the test; names are path-traversal-checked.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Network Egress Allowlist Guard

Pin which hosts automation may reach. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v34_features_doc.rst.

  • EgressPolicy / set_egress_policy (AC_egress_allow / AC_egress_check / AC_egress_reset, ac_*): an allow list (default-deny) and/or deny list of fnmatch host globs (*.example.com) consulted by every http_request (so AC_http and all features built on it are covered at once). Blocked hosts raise EgressBlocked before a socket opens. Starts in allow-all mode — no behavior change until an operator locks egress down. Closes the exfiltration surface for unattended automation.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Just-In-Time Credential Leases

Zero standing privilege for secrets. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v33_features_doc.rst.

  • CredentialBroker (AC_lease_secret / AC_lease_valid / AC_revoke_lease / AC_lease_active, ac_*): a consumer takes a short-lived lease (token bound to a secret name + expiry); the real value is fetched only at redeem time, only while valid, through a pluggable resolver (an unlocked SecretManager, env, vault). Secret values never enter executor/MCP records — the executor/MCP/Builder surfaces manage the lease lifecycle only; redeem is a deliberate Python-API-only escape hatch. Clock and resolver injectable.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Maker-Checker Approval Gate

Segregation of duties for high-risk steps. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v32_features_doc.rst.

  • ApprovalGate (AC_approval_request / AC_approval_approve / AC_approval_reject / AC_approval_status, ac_*): a maker files a high-risk action and gets a token; a checker — required to be a different principal — approves or rejects it; the action proceeds only once is_approved is true. State is an optional shared JSON file so the dispatcher and the human approver can run as separate processes. Pure-stdlib, SOC2-style four-eyes control.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Plugin SDK

Third-party AC_* commands via entry points. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v31_features_doc.rst.

  • discover_plugins / load_plugins (AC_list_plugins / AC_load_plugins, ac_*): a pip package registers new executor commands declaratively in the je_auto_control.commands entry-point group; AutoControl discovers and registers them at runtime (immediately usable from JSON flows, socket server, scheduler, MCP). Broken plugins are skipped; the declarative, namespaced complement to the runtime path loader.

What's new (2026-06-19) — MCP Structured Output

MCP 2025-06-18 structured tool output. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v30_features_doc.rst.

  • MCPTool(output_schema=...) — a tool may declare an outputSchema; its dict result is returned as structuredContent in the tools/call response so clients/LLMs consume a typed, schema-validated object instead of re-parsing text. to_descriptor() advertises it in tools/list; non-dict results and schema-less tools are unchanged. ac_validate_rows is the first built-in to adopt it.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Tweened Drag

Deterministic eased drags. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v29_features_doc.rst.

  • tween_points / tween_drag / easing_names (AC_tween_drag, ac_tween_drag): drag from start to end along an eased curve (linear / ease_in_out_quad / ease_out_cubic / ease_in_cubic) — deterministic, pure-math path, injectable sink for tests; complements the humanized jitter.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Process-Doc (SOP) Generator

Turn an action list into a step-by-step SOP. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v28_features_doc.rst.

  • generate_sop / write_sop (AC_generate_sop, ac_generate_sop): map a recorded/authored action list to numbered, human-readable steps + an HTML document (UiPath Task-Capture deliverable); content HTML-escaped, unknown commands degrade gracefully.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Heal Analytics & Secret Scan

Two pure-stdlib audit/analysis tools. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v27_features_doc.rst.

  • Self-heal analytics — analyze_heal_log / heal_stats (AC_heal_stats, ac_heal_stats): aggregate the self-heal log into heal-rate, strategy mix, fallback-rate, avg latency and the most-brittle locators — catch decaying selectors before they fail.
  • Secret scan — scan_secrets(data) (AC_scan_secrets, ac_scan_secrets): flag hardcoded secrets in action JSON (by key name, value pattern, or high entropy) that should use ${secrets.*}; vault refs ignored, previews masked.

What's new (2026-06-19) — CI Annotations & Clipboard History

Two pure-stdlib utilities. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v26_features_doc.rst.

  • CI annotations — emit_annotations(results) (AC_ci_annotations, ac_ci_annotations): turn result dicts into GitHub Actions workflow commands (::error file=...,line=...::msg) so failures show inline in a PR, no reporter action needed.
  • Clipboard history — ClipboardHistory / default_clipboard_history (AC_clip_history_capture/list/search/start/stop, ac_clip_history_*): a capped, searchable, newest-first ring buffer of copied text with an optional background poller.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Resilience Primitives

Reusable retry + circuit-breaker primitives. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v25_features_doc.rst.

  • RetryPolicy — RetryPolicy(...).run(fn) / retry_call(fn): retry on configured exceptions with exponential backoff (injectable sleep). (The existing AC_retry flow command already retries an action body; this is the reusable callable wrapper.)
  • CircuitBreaker — CircuitBreaker / CircuitOpenError (AC_circuit_call, ac_circuit_call): open after N consecutive failures, short-circuit until a reset timeout, then half-open — stops a retry storm hammering a downed dependency. Injectable clock; AC_circuit_call runs an action list through a named breaker.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Timed Input Macros

Replay input with timing fidelity + a press-hold-release DSL, full stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v24_features_doc.rst.

  • Timed timeline replay — replay_timeline(events, speed=...) (AC_replay_timeline, ac_replay_timeline): replay events honoring each delta_ms gap, scaled by speed and clampable; ops = move/click/scroll/press/release/key.
  • Input-sequence DSL — run_sequence(steps) (AC_input_sequence, ac_input_sequence): declarative press/hold/release chords + repeat/wait. Both inject sink+sleep for deterministic tests.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Semantic Screen State

The semantic companion to the pixel diff, full stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v23_features_doc.rst.

  • Snapshot & diff — snapshot / diff_snapshots / snapshot_screen / screen_changed (AC_screen_snapshot / AC_screen_diff / AC_screen_changed, ac_*): normalize the a11y tree to {role, name, bbox} and report what appeared / vanished / moved with a human-readable summary — the feedback signal an agent needs to verify a step ("Save dialog appeared").
  • Describe the screen — describe_screen (AC_describe_screen, ac_describe_screen): a compact "where am I" — role counts + interactive control labels.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Set-of-Marks Overlay

The standard VLM-grounding format, full stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v22_features_doc.rst.

  • Number elements — mark_elements / render_marks / resolve_mark (pure + Pillow): assign 1..N to interactable elements (with centre/role/text), draw numbered red boxes on a screenshot, and map a chosen number back to its element — so a VLM picks a number instead of guessing pixels (directly strengthens the existing VLM locator).
  • Mark-then-click loop — mark_screen(render_path=...) / mark_click(n) (AC_mark_screen / AC_mark_click, ac_*): number the live a11y tree (+ optional overlay screenshot), feed marks+image to a model, then click mark n.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Checkpoint & Resume

Durable execution for long flows + a py.typed marker, full stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v21_features_doc.rst.

  • Flow checkpoint & resume — run_resumable(actions, run_id=..., store=...) / CheckpointStore (AC_run_resumable / AC_checkpoint_status / AC_checkpoint_clear, ac_*): persist step-index + variables after each step; on re-run with the same run_id, fast-forward past completed steps and rehydrate variables — a flow that crashes at step 400 resumes at 400, not 0. Pluggable (SQLite default), cleared on completion.
  • py.typed marker — ships the PEP 561 marker so Mypy/Pyright/Pylance honor AutoControl's inline type hints in downstream code (the repo's typed API was previously invisible to type checkers).

What's new (2026-06-19) — i18n / l10n Testing

Three pure-stdlib internationalization/localization testing helpers that compound, full stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v20_features_doc.rst.

  • Pseudo-localization — pseudo_localize / pseudo_localize_catalog (AC_pseudo_localize, ac_pseudo_localize): accent + pad UI strings (placeholders preserved, ⟦…⟧ wrapped) to flush out hardcoded text and pre-stress layout before real translation.
  • Text-overflow detection — check_overflow(elements) (AC_check_overflow, ac_check_overflow): flag text whose estimated width exceeds its widget bounds (the #1 l10n bug), computed from the a11y bounds AutoControl already reads.
  • Catalog completeness — check_catalog(base, target) (AC_check_catalog, ac_check_catalog): diff a translation catalog for missing / orphaned / empty keys and placeholder mismatches — a CI gate against blank UI.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Data Quality

Three pure-stdlib data-quality helpers (the gate between load_rows/OCR and downstream entry), full stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v19_features_doc.rst.

  • Row schema validation — validate_rows(rows, schema) (AC_validate_rows, ac_validate_rows): declarative per-field rules (type/required/regex/min/max/min_len/max_len/allowed/unique); returns {ok, valid, invalid, errors} so bad scraped/OCR data is caught before it corrupts an ERP/form.
  • Field extraction — extract_fields(text, fields, patterns) (AC_extract_fields, ac_extract_fields): named regex presets (email/url/ipv4/phone/date_iso/amount/hashtag) + custom patterns over free text / OCR blobs.
  • Row masking — mask_rows(rows, rules) (AC_mask_rows, ac_mask_rows): mask columns before export — redact / hash (SHA-256) / partial (keep last 4); complements the screenshot-only redaction.

What's new (2026-06-19) — SBOM & Suite Sharding

Two pure-stdlib ops tools (security + scale research angles), full stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v18_features_doc.rst.

  • CycloneDX SBOM — build_sbom / write_sbom (AC_generate_sbom, ac_generate_sbom): emit a CycloneDX 1.6 dependency SBOM (name/version/purl/license) for supply-chain compliance (EU CRA / EO 14028); root limits to a package's closure, extra_components inventories action files. No third-party dependency.
  • Duration-aware suite sharding — shard_flows / merge_results (AC_shard_suite / AC_merge_results): bin-pack flows into N shards balanced by historical per-flow duration (so the slowest worker, not test count, defines runtime), then merge per-shard reports into one rollup.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Reactive Observer

A non-blocking screen observer (SikuliX observe model), full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v17_features_doc.rst.

  • ScreenObserver (AC_observe_add / AC_observe_remove / AC_observe_list / AC_observe_poll / AC_observe_start / AC_observe_stop, ac_observe_*): register watches that fire on appear / vanish / change of an image/text/pixel and run a callback or action list — react to dialogs/progress/status while the main flow continues.
  • Testable by design — detection is an injectable predicate; transition logic is unit-tested via poll_once() with synthetic values. Built-in image_predicate / text_predicate / pixel_predicate wrap the existing locate/OCR/pixel helpers.

What's new (2026-06-19) — WCAG 2.2 Audit

The accessibility audit gains a WCAG 2.2 / EN 301 549 success-criterion layer, full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v16_features_doc.rst.

  • WCAG-tagged conformance audit — wcag_audit(level="AA") (AC_wcag_audit, ac_wcag_audit): tags every defect with its WCAG success-criterion id/level/impact (4.1.2, 1.4.3, 1.4.10) and returns a conformance report with by_criterion/by_impact counts, filtered to A/AA/AAA — mappable to EN 301 549 for EAA compliance evidence.
  • Target Size (SC 2.5.8) — audit_target_size(elements, min_px=24): new WCAG 2.2 rule flagging interactive targets smaller than 24×24 px, computed from element bounds; tag_issue adds SC tagging to any existing audit issue.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Memory & Determinism

Two pure-stdlib tools from the agent/QA research round, full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v15_features_doc.rst.

  • Agent episodic memory — AgentMemory (AC_memory_remember / AC_memory_recall / AC_memory_recent / AC_memory_forget / AC_memory_stats, ac_memory_*): SQLite store of (goal → trajectory → outcome) episodes with keyword recall to inject past experience into the planner's context — cross-run learning, no embedding dependency.
  • Deterministic run — DeterministicRun / seed_everything (AC_seed_everything, ac_seed_everything): pin the RNG seed and freeze time.time for a with block (recording the choices for replay) to kill time/randomness flakiness; time.monotonic left intact so timeouts still work.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Office I/O

Headless read/write for Excel/Word/PowerPoint, full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder). Optional extra: pip install je_auto_control[office]. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v14_features_doc.rst.

  • Excel — read_workbook / write_workbook (AC_read_workbook / AC_write_workbook, ac_read_workbook / ac_write_workbook): read an .xlsx worksheet into row dicts (first row = keys) and write rows back, no GUI.
  • Word — read_document / write_document (AC_read_document / AC_write_document): read/write .docx paragraphs.
  • PowerPoint — read_presentation / write_presentation (AC_read_presentation / AC_write_presentation): read per-slide text; write slides as {title, body:[...]}.

The backing libraries (openpyxl/python-docx/python-pptx) are optional — each call raises a clear error if missing, and import je_auto_control pulls none of them.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Agent Toolkit

Three pure-stdlib tools for LLM/agent-driven automation, full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v13_features_doc.rst.

  • Skill / playbook library — SkillLibrary (AC_skill_save / AC_skill_run / AC_skill_list / AC_skill_remove / AC_skill_search, ac_skill_*): store named, reusable action sequences on disk, search them by name/description/tags, and replay across runs — the durable counterpart to in-memory macros.
  • Prompt-injection guardrail — assess_text / scan_text / redact_text (AC_guard_text, ac_guard_text): scan untrusted screen/OCR text for injection patterns (instruction-override, system-prompt exfiltration, jailbreak/chat-template markers …) before feeding it to an LLM; returns {suspicious, score, findings, redacted}.
  • A2A agent card — build_agent_card / write_agent_card (AC_agent_card, ac_agent_card): publish an A2A agent card so other agents can discover and call AutoControl as a GUI-automation peer.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Authoring & Debugging

Two pure-stdlib authoring-time tools, full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v12_features_doc.rst.

  • Element repository — ElementRepository (AC_element_save / AC_element_find / AC_element_click / AC_element_remove / AC_element_list, ac_element_*): save native-UI locators under friendly names (object repository) and reuse them — repo.click("login.submit") instead of repeating name/role everywhere; a UI change is fixed in one place.
  • Step debugger / tracer — FlowDebugger (breakpoints, step/continue_/run_to_end, live variables()) and trace_actions (AC_debug_trace, ac_debug_trace): step through an action list one command at a time with variables persisting across steps, or get a per-step {index, command, result} trace (with dry_run to plan without running).

What's new (2026-06-19) — Test & Tooling Batch

Three pure-stdlib quality-of-life tools, full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder). Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v11_features_doc.rst.

  • Synthetic test data — generate_rows(schema, count, seed=...) / write_dataset (AC_generate_data, ac_generate_data): deterministic fake rows (name/email/phone/int/choice/date…) to drive data-driven runs without real PII; no Faker.
  • MCP registry manifest — write_server_manifest("server.json", include_tools=True) (AC_mcp_manifest, ac_mcp_manifest): publish a registry-valid server.json so MCP agents/IDEs can discover this server.
  • Risk-based test selection — rank_flows / select_flows (AC_rank_tests / AC_select_tests): rank flows by recent failures, flakiness, staleness and never-run from run history; run the riskiest first or only the top-k.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Transactional Queue

Turn AutoControl from "run a script" into "run a robot." A SQLite-backed work queue implements the production-RPA dispatcher/performer pattern: enqueue items, process one at a time with per-item status, dedup and retry, so a run of thousands is resumable after a crash and parallelizable. Pure stdlib, full stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v10_features_doc.rst.

  • Dispatcher/performer — WorkQueue.add() enqueues (dedupes by reference); get_next() atomically claims the oldest item; complete() / fail() record the outcome. AC_queue_add / AC_queue_next / AC_queue_complete / AC_queue_fail / AC_queue_stats.
  • Failure semantics — application errors retry up to max_retries; business errors (BusinessError / kind="business") never retry. stats() gives per-status counts for dashboards.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Unattended Reliability

Three practitioner-pain fixes for unattended / login automation, all headless and full-stack. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v9_features_doc.rst.

  • OTP / TOTP for 2FA — generate_totp / verify_totp (AC_otp_to_var, ac_generate_otp): mint the current 6-digit code from a base32 secret to type into a login form (reuses the remote-desktop TOTP engine).
  • Native file dialogs — handle_file_dialog (AC_handle_file_dialog): wait for the OS Open/Save/folder dialog, type the path, confirm — in one call, with an injectable driver.
  • Locked-session guard — ensure_interactive_session / is_session_locked (AC_assert_session_active): fail clearly when the workstation is locked / disconnected instead of emitting phantom clicks.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Popup Watchdog

The #1 cause of unattended-automation failure is an unexpected dialog the script never coded for (UAC, "session expiring", Windows Update, a modal). The popup watchdog runs a concurrent guard thread that watches for registered patterns and dismisses them independently of the main flow. Surfaced by the practitioner pain-point research as the top unattended failure cause; full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder), fully headless. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v8_features_doc.rst.

  • Auto-dismiss popups — default_popup_watchdog.add_window_rule(title, action="close") then .start() (AC_watchdog_add / AC_watchdog_start / AC_watchdog_stop / AC_watchdog_list): closes a matching window or presses a key (enter/esc) when it appears.
  • Custom rules — PopupWatchdog / WatchdogRule pair any detector (image/a11y/text) with a dismisser; a failing rule is logged and skipped, never killing the guard loop.

What's new (2026-06-19) — Native UI Control

Object-level desktop automation: read and drive native controls through the OS accessibility API (by name / role / app / AutomationId) instead of clicking pixels or OCR-ing text — far more reliable for native apps. The accessibility layer previously only listed/found/clicked; it now also acts. Ships through the full stack (facade, AC_*, MCP, Script Builder) with a Windows UIAutomation backend; unsupported backends raise a clear error. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v7_features_doc.rst.

  • Read / set value — control_get_value / control_set_value (AC_control_get_value / AC_control_set_value): read a textbox/combo value (no OCR) and set it in one call (no per-key typing).
  • Invoke / toggle — control_invoke / control_toggle (AC_control_invoke / AC_control_toggle): press a button or flip a checkbox via its control pattern.
  • Read a table/grid — read_control_table (AC_read_table): scrape a grid/list/table control into rows of cell strings — desktop data extraction without OCR.
  • Targets a control by name / role / app_name / automation_id (the stable Windows identifier), so it survives layout/localization changes.

What's new (2026-06-19)

Two headless cores that shipped without the rest of their stack are now first-class. Both gain a facade re-export, an AC_* executor command, an MCP tool, and a Script Builder entry, with headless tests. Full reference: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v6_features_doc.rst.

  • Visual regression (golden images) — take_golden / compare_to_golden (AC_take_golden / AC_assert_visual): capture a baseline screenshot and fail when the screen drifts beyond a pixel tolerance, with a highlighted diff image and mask regions. AC_assert_visual auto-creates the baseline on first run. PIL-only.
  • Finite-state machine — run_state_machine (AC_run_state_machine): drive a script as a declarative {initial, states} spec whose on_enter actions run through the executor and whose transitions fire on after / if_var_eq / predicate guards, bounded by max_steps / global_timeout_s.

What's new (2026-06-18)

Eight headless capabilities that round out scripting, integration, and CI use: a real command-line interface, recording-to-code generation, and first-class HTTP / SQL / email / PDF / wait steps. Each ships a headless Python API, an AC_* executor command, an MCP tool, and a visual Script Builder entry, and is covered by headless tests (network / SMTP / PDF backends are injected, so nothing touches the outside world). Full reference page: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v5_features_doc.rst.

Command-line interface

  • je_auto_control console script — run and inspect action files from a shell / CI: run (with --var, --dry-run), validate (alias lint), list-commands, fmt, record, codegen, version.

Code generation

  • Recording → code — generate_code / generate_code_file (AC_generate_code, je_auto_control codegen) turn a recording or action file into a pytest test, standalone Python, or Robot suite. The default calls style emits readable ac.<fn>(...) statements, falling back to ac.execute_action([...]) for flow control.

Integrations

  • HTTP / API — http_request (AC_http_request): method, headers, JSON or raw body, basic / bearer auth, explicit timeout; non-2xx responses are returned (not raised) so you can assert on status. AC_http_to_var now shares the client and can POST bodies.
  • SQL — query_sqlite (AC_sql_to_var / AC_assert_db): read-only, parameter-bound SQLite queries into a variable, or a scalar assertion (e.g. SELECT COUNT(*) ... == 0).
  • Email (SMTP) — send_email (AC_send_email): stdlib SMTP with TLS on by default (STARTTLS or implicit SSL over a verified context), attachments, and multiple recipients.
  • PDF — extract_pdf_text / pdf_metadata / assert_pdf_text (AC_pdf_to_var / AC_assert_pdf_text): text extraction and content assertions, backed by the optional pypdf extra (pip install je_auto_control[pdf]).

Smart waits

  • Wait for a file — wait_until_file (AC_wait_for_file) blocks until a file exists and its size stops growing (a download finished writing).
  • Wait for a TCP port — wait_until_port (AC_wait_for_port) blocks until host:port accepts connections (pairs with launch_process).
  • Wait for a process — wait_until_process (AC_wait_for_process) blocks until a process appears or exits — the companion to launch_process / kill_process (requires psutil).

Security — HTTP / SMTP enforce http/https or TLS with verified certificates and explicit timeouts; SQL is read-only and parameter-bound; file paths are resolved before I/O.

What's new (2026-06-17)

Thirty-plus automation primitives across input realism, vision, flow control, triggers, window management, and file security — plus recoverable deletion and an editor undo. Each ships with a headless API, an AC_* executor command, and a visual Script Builder entry; vision and window features keep their geometry / IO operations injectable so the logic is fully unit-tested. Full reference page: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v4_features_doc.rst.

Human-like input

  • Human-like mouse motion — move_mouse_humanized walks an eased, bowed cubic-Bezier path with optional overshoot + jitter, deterministic by seed (AC_human_move).
  • Human-like typing — type_text_humanized types character by character with a jittered per-key delay and optional "thinking" pauses, seedable (AC_human_type).

Vision

  • VLM natural-language assertion — assert_by_description asks a vision-language model whether the screen matches a description; the verify() companion to locate_by_description (AC_assert_vlm).
  • Scroll-to-find — scroll_until_visible scrolls a direction until a template image or OCR text appears, or the budget runs out (AC_scroll_to_find).
  • Region colour stats — region_color_stats reports a region's average + dominant colour and that colour's pixel fraction (AC_region_color_stats).
  • QR reading — read_qr_codes decodes QR codes in a screen region via OpenCV's QRCodeDetector (no new dependency) (AC_read_qr).

Flow control & variables

  • Reusable macros — AC_define_macro / AC_call_macro: define a named, parameterised action sub-routine once and call it with ${arg} bindings.
  • In-process parallel — AC_parallel runs branch action lists concurrently, each on an isolated executor so branches never race on shared variables.
  • Performance-budget assertion — assert_duration / AC_assert_duration fails a block that takes longer than a millisecond budget.
  • Read into a variable — AC_ocr_to_var, AC_shell_to_var, AC_read_file_to_var, AC_http_to_var (body or dotted JSON path), AC_now_to_var (strftime), AC_random_to_var (seeded int / float / choice).
  • Transform a variable — AC_transform_var: upper / lower / strip / title / replace / regex-extract / slice, in place or into a new variable.
  • Assert a variable — assert_variable / AC_assert_var: eq / ne / lt / gt / contains / regex through the assertion DSL.

Triggers & smart waits

  • Composite triggers — AllOfTrigger / AnyOfTrigger / SequenceTrigger combine any existing trigger by boolean AND / OR / ordered sequence.
  • Cron trigger — CronTrigger fires on a five-field cron expression, composing with the boolean triggers (e.g. "at 09:00 and only if the image is on screen").
  • More smart waits — wait_until_clipboard_changes (AC_wait_clipboard_change) and wait_until_window_closed (AC_wait_window_closed).

Window management

  • Per-window capture — capture_window screenshots exactly a window's bounds by title (AC_capture_window).
  • Layout save / restore — save_window_layout / restore_window_layout snapshot every window's position to JSON and move them all back later (AC_save_window_layout / AC_restore_window_layout).
  • Snap / tile — snap_window moves a window to a screen half, quarter, or maximize (AC_snap_window).

File security & safety

  • Action-file signing — sign_action_file / verify_action_file (HMAC-SHA256 sidecar); execute_files can require signatures via JE_AUTOCONTROL_REQUIRE_SIGNED_ACTIONS (AC_sign_action_file / AC_verify_action_file).
  • Action-file encryption — encrypt_action_file / decrypt_action_file (Fernet, AES-128-CBC + HMAC) (AC_encrypt_action_file / AC_decrypt_action_file).
  • Recoverable deletion — move_to_trash sends a file to the OS recycle bin (Win32 SHFileOperation undo flag / macOS Trash / Linux XDG trash, preferring send2trash) (AC_move_to_trash).

Reporting & notifications

  • Screenshot annotation — annotate_screenshot draws labelled boxes / translucent highlights / arrows / text onto a capture (AC_annotate_screenshot).
  • Desktop notifications — notify shows a cross-platform toast (notify-send / osascript / PowerShell), injection-safe (AC_notify).

GUI

  • Recording Editor undo — every edit is snapshotted; Ctrl+Z (and an Undo button) restore the prior state.
  • Triggers tab — "Combine selected" wraps chosen triggers into a composite; new Cron trigger type.
  • Assertions tab — new VLM ("screen matches description") assertion kind.
  • Every new AC_* command appears in the visual Script Builder.

Fixes — repaired the USB-passthrough approval-prompt crash on PySide6 6.11.1 (Q_ARG(object) → a Qt signal), eight stale / broken GUI + USB tests, two lost exception chains, and brought thirteen functions back under the cyclomatic-complexity gate.

What's new (2026-06)

Nine additions that turn the automation primitives into a full QA / test framework: assert screen state, drive scripts from data, detect and quarantine flaky tests, run a scored suite, emit CI-native reports, audit accessibility / i18n, fan a script across a device matrix, and assert on audio / video. Each ships with a headless API, an AC_* executor command, an ac_* MCP tool, and a Qt GUI tab. Full reference page: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v3_features_doc.rst.

Assertions

  • Assertion DSL — verify screen state instead of only driving it: assert_text (OCR, regex + present=False for absence), assert_image, assert_pixel, assert_window, assert_clipboard (equals / contains / regex, present=False to confirm a secret was cleared), assert_process (a named process is / isn't running, via psutil). Returns an AssertionResult; raises AutoControlAssertionException on mismatch with optional failure screenshot (AC_assert_text / _image / _pixel / _window / _clipboard / _process).
  • Off-screen assertions — assert_file (existence / substring / SHA-256 / minimum size — verify a download or export) and assert_http (an http/https endpoint returns a status + optional body text, always with an explicit timeout). Both extend the DSL beyond the screen and plug into the combinators below (AC_assert_file / AC_assert_http).
  • Assertion combinators — assert_all([...specs]) runs a batch as soft assertions (every spec is checked, all failures collected before raising) and returns a GroupAssertionResult; assert_any([...specs]) is the OR-complement (passes when at least one spec passes, short-circuiting — e.g. either a success dialog or a redirect confirms a login); assert_eventually(spec, timeout, interval) retries one declarative assertion spec until it passes or times out (e.g. poll a health endpoint until it returns 200, or wait for a download file to appear). Both are spec-driven ({"kind": "text", "text": "Saved"}, {"kind": "http", "url": "..."}) so they work identically from Python, JSON, and MCP across every assertion kind — text/image/pixel/window/clipboard/process/file/http (AC_assert_all / AC_assert_eventually).
  • Media assertions — assert_audio_activity (record + RMS threshold for sound vs silence) and assert_video_changes (mean frame-to-frame diff over a segment for motion vs static); pure numeric cores, lazy sounddevice / OpenCV (AC_assert_audio / AC_assert_video_changes).

Data-driven execution

  • Data sources — load_rows connectors for CSV / JSON / SQLite / Excel / inline; the AC_for_each_row block command runs a body once per row with ${row.column} access. SQLite is single read-only SELECT/WITH only; paths are realpath-validated. ${var} interpolation now resolves dotted dict-key / list-index paths while preserving types (AC_load_data).

Flaky detection & quarantine

  • Flaky report — score intermittent failures from run history by pass↔fail flip rate, grouped by script / source (AC_flaky_report).
  • Quarantine — a persistent (mode 0600) skip-list the suite runner honours; auto_quarantine_from_flakiness auto-populates it above a flip-rate threshold (AC_quarantine_add / _remove / _list / _clear / _auto).

Suite runner + CI reports

  • QA suite orchestration — run_suite turns action lists into scored cases with setup / teardown, tags, and data-driven expansion; assertion failures → failed, other exceptions → error, quarantined → skipped (AC_run_suite).
  • JUnit / Allure reports — write_junit_xml + write_allure_results (or junit_path / allure_dir on AC_run_suite) emit reports Jenkins / GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / Allure parse natively.

Audit, matrix, media

  • Accessibility / i18n audit — reuse the a11y tree + OCR to find missing accessible names, WCAG contrast-ratio failures, and ellipsis-truncated strings (AC_audit_accessibility / AC_audit_contrast).
  • Mobile device matrix — fan one action list across many Android / iOS devices in parallel, each on an isolated executor, targeting the current device via ${device.*}; per-device pass/fail, failures isolated (AC_run_device_matrix).

What's new (2026-05)

Twenty-seven additions covering smarter locators, deeper IDE / ops tooling, four new platforms (Wayland, Wayland-libei, Android widget-tree, iOS), screenshot PII redaction, and a generic plan-execute-verify agent loop. Each ships with a headless API, an AC_* executor command, an ac_* MCP tool, and (where it makes sense) a Qt GUI tab. Full reference page: docs/source/Eng/doc/new_features/v2_features_doc.rst.

Locator + selector intelligence

  • Self-healing locator — image_template → VLM fallback with a JSON-lines audit log (AC_self_heal_locate / _click).
  • Anchor-based locator — find element B by spatial relation (above, below, left_of, right_of, near) to anchor A; anchor and target can use different backends (image / OCR / VLM / a11y).
  • OCR with structured output — cluster raw OCR matches into rows, tables, and label:value form fields (AC_ocr_read_structure).
  • Smart waits — wait_until_screen_stable, wait_until_pixel_changes, wait_until_region_idle: frame-diff replacements for time.sleep.
  • A/B locator framework — race N strategies for the same target; recommend the historically best one from a persisted ledger.

Operations + observability

  • LLM cost telemetry — per-call token + USD log with day / model / provider rollup (record_llm_call, summarise_llm_costs).
  • Trace replay UI — scrubbable timeline over the existing time-travel recordings with per-step action list.
  • Failure → ticket automation — fan a failure report out to Jira / Linear / GitHub Issues when a scheduled / triggered / REST run fails.
  • Container CI templates — GitHub Actions + GitLab CI workflows that build the image, run the headless pytest suite under Xvfb, and smoke-test the REST entrypoint; XFCE+x11vnc Dockerfile variant for flows that need a real WM.
  • Cross-host DAG orchestrator — parallel execution with skip-on-failure cascade across local + admin-console-registered hosts (run_dag, AC_run_dag).
  • Multi-viewer presence — roster + controller/observer roles for the remote desktop, with a thread-safe Python PresenceRegistry independent of aiortc.

Agent + integrations

  • Computer-use high-level API — run_computer_use(goal, ...) wraps ComputerUseAgentBackend + AgentLoop; auto-detects display size; bounded by max_steps / wall_seconds.
  • Generic agent loop JSON + MCP — AC_run_agent / ac_run_agent expose the closed-loop AgentLoop (plan → act → verify → retry) with pluggable Anthropic / OpenAI backends; the Anthropic-only Computer-Use raw path remains via AC_computer_use.
  • WebRunner convenience commands — web_open / web_quit / web_screenshot / web_current_url on top of the existing je_web_runner bridge; same surface exposed as AC_web_* and ac_web_*.
  • Chat-ops bot — transport-agnostic CommandRouter + polling Slack adapter. Built-in commands: /help, /scripts, /run, /screenshot, /status. RBAC via required_role.

Privacy + safety

  • Screenshot PII redaction — RedactionEngine with built-in detectors for email / credit card / SSN / phone (regex against caller-supplied OCR tokens) plus accessibility-tree secure-text-field detection. Forced regions for sticky overlays. Env-var-driven default policy JE_AUTOCONTROL_REDACTION=off|moderate|strict. Wired through AC_redact_screenshot + ac_redact_screenshot.

Platform coverage

  • Wayland CLI backend — wtype / ydotool / grim with XDG_SESSION_TYPE auto-detect and X11 (XWayland) fallback; override via JE_AUTOCONTROL_LINUX_DISPLAY_SERVER=x11|wayland|auto.
  • Wayland libei native — ctypes binding to libei.so.* for microsecond-latency input; opt-in via JE_AUTOCONTROL_WAYLAND_INPUT_BACKEND=libei|cli|auto. Defaults to libei when loadable.
  • macOS Accessibility deep-dive — recursive dump_accessibility_tree() plus a polling AccessibilityRecorder for focus / bounds events.
  • Android — adb shell primitives — AC_android_tap/swipe/key/text/screenshot route through adb for any phone over USB / Wi-Fi adb. No daemon required.
  • Android — uiautomator2 widget tree — AC_android_find_element/click_element/dump_hierarchy add selector-based widget lookup (text / resource_id / description / class_name) and live XML hierarchy dump on top of the adb path.
  • iOS — XCUITest via WebDriverAgent — new je_auto_control.ios.* namespace: tap, swipe, long_press, type_text, press_key, screenshot, screen_size, find_element / click_element (XCUITest selectors: name, class_name, predicate), dump_source. Seven new AC_ios_* executor commands and matching ac_ios_* MCP tools. facebook-wda is an optional pip dep; loads lazily so non-Mac hosts still import the package.

Developer experience

  • autocontrol-lsp completion — the language server now tracks didOpen / didChange / didClose, publishes diagnostics for invalid JSON and unknown AC_* commands, and provides signature help generated from the live executor table.
  • .pyi stub generator — python -m je_auto_control.utils.stubs.generator je_auto_control/actions.pyi emits an IDE-facing stub so every AC_* command autocompletes with parameter hints.
  • VS Code extension — bundled extension now ships AutoControl: Run / Screenshot / Preview commands that hit the local REST API.
  • Browser extension recorder — Manifest V3 extension under browser-extension/: capture clicks, typing, navigation, form submissions in a tab and export them as AC_web_* / WR_* JSON.
  • pytest plugin + Gherkin BDD — pytest11 entry point auto-loads; @pytest.mark.autocontrol arms screenshot-on-failure; bdd_steps.register_pytest_bdd_steps(pytest_bdd) wires Given/When/Then onto every AC_* verb.
  • Visual flow editor — node-based view that round-trips to the same JSON action format the list-based Script Builder uses.

Features

  • QA / Test Framework — assertion DSL (assert_text / _image / _pixel / _window + audio/video assertions), data-driven execution (CSV / JSON / SQLite / Excel → AC_for_each_row), a scored run_suite with setup/teardown/tags, JUnit + Allure report output, flaky-test detection with auto-quarantine, accessibility / i18n auditing (missing labels, WCAG contrast, truncation), and a parallel mobile device matrix. See What's new (2026-06)
  • Automation toolkit — human-like mouse motion + typing, VLM / variable / duration assertions, reusable macros + in-process parallel blocks, composite + cron triggers, read-into-a-variable commands (OCR / shell / file / HTTP / time / random), variable transforms, scroll-to-find, region colour stats, QR reading, per-window capture / layout save-restore / snap, screenshot annotation, desktop notifications, action-file signing + encryption, recoverable (recycle-bin) deletion, and Recording-Editor undo. See What's new (2026-06-17)
  • Mouse Automation — move, click, press, release, drag, and scroll with precise coordinate control
  • Keyboard Automation — press/release individual keys, type strings, hotkey combinations, key state detection
  • Image Recognition — locate UI elements on screen using OpenCV template matching with configurable threshold
  • Accessibility Element Finder — query the OS accessibility tree (Windows UIA / macOS AX) to locate buttons, menus, and controls by name/role
  • AI Element Locator (VLM) — describe a UI element in plain language and let a vision-language model (Anthropic / OpenAI) find its screen coordinates
  • OCR — extract text from screen regions through three pluggable backends (Tesseract for ASCII, EasyOCR for CJK without an external binary, PaddleOCR for highest-quality Chinese / Japanese / Korean). Single unified API + canonical language codes; backend chosen by backend= kwarg, AUTOCONTROL_OCR_BACKEND env var, or auto-detection. Wait for, click, or locate rendered text; regex search and full-region dump
  • LLM Action Planner — translate a plain-language description into a validated AC_* action list using Claude
  • Runtime Variables & Control Flow — ${var} substitution at execution time, plus AC_set_var / AC_inc_var / AC_if_var / AC_for_each / AC_loop / AC_while_var / AC_retry / AC_try for data-driven scripts. AC_while_var loops while a variable comparison holds (re-checked each iteration, max_iter safety cap). AC_try adds try/catch/finally: when body fails it runs the catch recovery branch instead of aborting, always runs finally, exposes the error to error_var, and can reraise after cleanup (loop break/continue still propagate through it)
  • Remote Desktop — stream this machine's screen and accept remote input over a token-authenticated TCP protocol, or connect to another machine and view + control it (host + viewer GUIs included). Optional TLS (HTTPS-grade encryption), WebSocket transport (ws:// + wss:// for browser / firewall-friendly clients), persistent 9-digit Host ID, host→viewer audio streaming, bidirectional clipboard sync (text + image), and chunked file transfer (drag-drop + progress bar; arbitrary destination path; no size cap). Plus folder sync (additive mirror — local deletions never propagate) and a self-hosted coturn TURN config bundle generator (turnserver.conf + systemd unit + docker-compose + README). AnyDesk-style popout: when the viewer authenticates, the live remote desktop opens in its own resizable top-level window so the control panel stays uncluttered. The Remote Desktop tabs are wrapped in QScrollArea so the panel stays usable on small windows and stretches edge-to-edge on 4K displays. Driveable headlessly via je_auto_control and over MCP through the new ac_remote_* tools
  • Driver-level input backends (opt-in) — for games / apps that ignore SendInput (Win) or XTest (Linux): Interception driver backend for Windows (HID-layer keyboard / mouse injection via Oblita's WHQL-signed driver, opt-in via JE_AUTOCONTROL_WIN32_BACKEND=interception), uinput backend for Linux (kernel /dev/uinput synthetic HID device, opt-in via JE_AUTOCONTROL_LINUX_BACKEND=uinput), and ViGEm virtual gamepad for Windows games that read controllers (virtual Xbox 360 pad with friendly button / dpad / stick / trigger API, exposed as AC_gamepad_* executor commands and ac_gamepad_* MCP tools). All three fall back gracefully when the driver isn't installed, so existing deployments keep working unchanged
  • Clipboard — read/write system clipboard text on Windows, macOS, and Linux
  • Screenshot & Screen Recording — capture full screen or regions as images, record screen to video (AVI/MP4)
  • Action Recording & Playback — record mouse/keyboard events and replay them
  • JSON-Based Action Scripting — define and execute automation flows using JSON action files (dry-run + step debug)
  • Scheduler — run scripts on an interval or cron expression; jobs persist across restarts
  • Global Hotkey Daemon — bind OS-level hotkeys to action scripts on all three desktops: Windows (RegisterHotKey), macOS (CGEventTap, needs Accessibility permission), and Linux X11 (XGrabKey with NumLock / CapsLock variant masking). Wayland hotkeys are still compositor-dependent (each session bus exposes a different shortcut portal); a Wayland session can still drive AutoControl via the new Wayland input backend (see What's new (2026-05)). Same bind() / start() API across platforms; the Strategy-pattern dispatch in backends/ auto-picks the right backend at start time
  • Event Triggers — fire scripts when an image appears, a window opens, a pixel changes, or a file is modified
  • Run History — SQLite-backed run log across scheduler / triggers / hotkeys / REST with auto error-screenshot artifacts
  • Report Generation — export test records as HTML, JSON, or XML reports with success/failure status
  • MCP Server — JSON-RPC 2.0 Model Context Protocol server (stdio + HTTP/SSE) so Claude Desktop / Claude Code / custom tool-use loops can drive AutoControl. ~100 tools, full protocol coverage (resources, prompts, sampling, roots, logging, progress, cancellation, elicitation), bearer-token auth + TLS, audit log, rate limit, plugin hot-reload, CI fake backend. New in this release: ac_remote_host_start / ac_remote_host_stop / ac_remote_host_status / ac_remote_viewer_connect / ac_remote_viewer_disconnect / ac_remote_viewer_status / ac_remote_viewer_send_input wrap the same singleton remote-desktop registry the GUI uses, so a model can spin up a host, open a viewer to another machine, and forward mouse / keyboard / type / hotkey actions through the active session
  • Remote Automation — TCP socket server and hardened REST API: bearer-token auth, per-IP rate limit + lockout, SQLite audit hook, Prometheus /metrics, OpenAPI-style endpoint table (/health, /screen_size, /sessions, /screenshot, /execute, /audit/list, /audit/verify, /inspector/recent, /usb/devices, /diagnose, ...), and a vanilla-JS browser dashboard at /dashboard (any phone with HTTP reach can monitor the host)
  • Plugin Loader — drop .py files exposing AC_* callables into a directory and register them as executor commands at runtime
  • Shell Integration — execute shell commands within automation workflows with async output capture
  • Callback Executor — trigger automation functions with callback hooks for chaining operations
  • Dynamic Package Loading — extend the executor at runtime by importing external Python packages
  • Project & Template Management — scaffold automation projects with keyword/executor directory structure
  • Window Management — send keyboard/mouse events directly to specific windows (Windows/Linux)
  • GUI Application — built-in PySide6 graphical interface with live language switching (English / 繁體中文 / 简体中文 / 日本語)
  • CLI Runner — python -m je_auto_control.cli run|list-jobs|start-server|start-rest
  • Cross-Platform — unified API across Windows, macOS, Linux (X11 + Wayland), Android (adb + uiautomator2), and iOS (WebDriverAgent / facebook-wda)
  • Screenshot PII redaction — RedactionEngine blurs emails / credit cards / SSNs / phones / secure-text fields / forced regions before screenshots leave the host (VLM upload, audit log, REST). Policy via env var JE_AUTOCONTROL_REDACTION=off|moderate|strict or per-call
  • Multi-Host Admin Console — register N AutoControl REST endpoints in one address book, poll them in parallel for health/sessions/jobs, broadcast actions to all of them. Persisted to ~/.je_auto_control/admin_hosts.json (mode 0600 on POSIX). Bad-token hosts surface as unhealthy with the actual HTTP error
  • Tamper-Evident Audit Log — SQLite events table with SHA-256 hash chain (prev_hash + row_hash per row); editing any past row breaks the chain. verify_chain() walks rows top-down and reports the first broken link. Legacy tables get backfilled at startup ("trust on first use")
  • WebRTC Packet Inspector — process-global rolling window of StatsSnapshot samples (default 600 / ~10 min @ 1Hz) fed by the existing WebRTC stats pollers. Per-metric last/min/max/avg/p95 for RTT, FPS, bitrate, packet loss, jitter
  • USB Device Enumeration — read-only cross-platform device listing. Tries pyusb (libusb) first; falls back to platform-specific (Windows Get-PnpDevice, macOS system_profiler, Linux /sys/bus/usb/devices). Phase 2 passthrough builds on this (see below)
  • System Diagnostics — single-command "is everything OK?" probe across platform, optional deps, executor command count, audit chain, screenshot, mouse, disk space, REST registry. CLI exits 0 if all green / 1 otherwise; REST /diagnose; severity-tagged GUI tab
  • USB Hotplug Events — polling-based hotplug watcher (UsbHotplugWatcher) with bounded ring buffer + sequence-numbered events; GET /usb/events?since=N lets late subscribers catch up. GUI auto-refresh toggle on the USB tab.
  • OpenAPI 3.1 + Swagger UI — GET /openapi.json (auth-gated, generated from the live route table) + GET /docs (browser Swagger UI with bearer token bar). Drift test in CI catches new routes added without metadata.
  • Configuration Bundle — single-file JSON export/import of user config (admin hosts, address book, trusted viewers, known hosts, host service, IDs). Atomic write with <name>.bak.<timestamp> backups; CLI python -m je_auto_control.utils.config_bundle export|import; POST /config/{export,import}; GUI buttons on the REST API tab.
  • USB Passthrough (opt-in) — let a remote viewer use a USB device physically attached to the host, over a WebRTC usb DataChannel. Wire-level protocol (11 opcodes incl. RESUME, CREDIT-based flow control, 16 KiB payload cap with EOF fragmentation for oversize transfers). All eight original open questions resolved: reliable-ordered channel, LIST-over-channel (ACL-filtered), per-claim credits, Linux kernel-driver detach/reattach, and ACL HMAC-SHA256 integrity (fail-closed on tamper; pluggable key — Windows DPAPI or passphrase vault). Backends: LibusbBackend (production), WinusbBackend (ctypes) and IokitBackend (native IOKit enumeration + libusb transfers) — Windows/macOS hardware-unverified; default_passthrough_backend() picks per-OS. Viewer-side blocking client (control/bulk/interrupt_transfer, list_devices, resume); in-process UsbLoopback so one machine can share + use a device through the full stack. Wired into WebRTC host/viewer (viewer.usb_client()) plus claim resume tokens that survive a reconnect. Persistent ACL (default deny, mode 0600) with host-side prompt dialog, abuse rate-limit / lockout, and tamper-evident audit integration. Five driving surfaces: AnyDesk-style GUI panel (share + ACL allow/block + local/remote use), AC_usb_* executor commands (JSON / socket / scheduler), REST /usb/..., first-class MCP ac_usb_* tools, and the Python API. Default off — opt-in via enable_usb_passthrough(True) or JE_AUTOCONTROL_USB_PASSTHROUGH=1; default-on still pending Phase 2e external security sign-off + real-hardware verification.
  • Observability (Prometheus + OpenTelemetry) — stdlib-only Counter / Gauge / Histogram registry with a tiny built-in HTTP exporter on /metrics, plus an OpenTelemetry-compatible tracer that upgrades to real OTel spans when the SDK is installed. The executor and agent loop emit autocontrol_action_calls_total{action,outcome}, autocontrol_action_duration_seconds, and autocontrol_agent_steps_total{tool,outcome} automatically — drop the URL into a Prometheus scrape config and you have a Grafana dashboard with zero per-script wiring.

Architecture

The runtime is layered: client surfaces (CLI, GUI, MCP/REST/socket servers) sit on top of the headless API (wrapper/ + utils/), which resolves to a per-OS backend chosen at import time by wrapper/platform_wrapper.py. The package façade (je_auto_control/__init__.py) re-exports every public name so users need only import je_auto_control regardless of which surface or backend they hit.

flowchart LR
    subgraph Clients["Client Surfaces"]
        direction TB
        Claude[["Claude Desktop /<br/>Claude Code"]]
        APIUser[["Custom Anthropic /<br/>OpenAI tool loops"]]
        HTTPClient[["HTTP / SSE clients"]]
        TCPClient[["Socket / REST clients"]]
        Browser[["Browser<br/>(/dashboard · /docs)"]]
        GUIUser[["PySide6 GUI"]]
        CLIUser[["python -m<br/>je_auto_control[.cli]"]]
        Library[["Library users<br/>(import je_auto_control)"]]
    end

    subgraph Transports["Transports & Servers"]
        direction TB
        Stdio["MCP stdio<br/>JSON-RPC 2.0"]
        HTTPMCP["MCP HTTP /<br/>SSE + auth + TLS"]
        REST["REST server :9939<br/>bearer auth · rate-limit ·<br/>OpenAPI · /metrics · /dashboard"]
        Socket["Socket server<br/>:9938"]
        WebRTC["WebRTC sessions<br/>(remote desktop ·<br/>files · audio · USB)"]
    end

    subgraph MCP["mcp_server/"]
        direction TB
        Dispatcher["MCPServer<br/>(JSON-RPC dispatcher)"]
        Tools["tools/<br/>~90 ac_* + aliases"]
        Resources["resources/<br/>files · history ·<br/>commands · screen-live"]
        Prompts["prompts/<br/>built-in templates"]
        Context["context · audit ·<br/>rate-limit · log-bridge"]
        FakeBE["fake_backend<br/>(CI smoke)"]
    end

    subgraph Core["Headless Core (wrapper/ + utils/)"]
        direction TB
        Wrapper["wrapper/<br/>mouse · keyboard · screen ·<br/>image · record · window"]
        Executor["executor/<br/>AC_* JSON action engine"]
        Vision["vision/ · ocr/ ·<br/>accessibility/"]
        Recorder["scheduler/ · triggers/ ·<br/>hotkey/ · plugin_loader/<br/>run_history/"]
        IOUtils["clipboard/ · cv2_utils/ ·<br/>shell_process/ · json/"]
    end

    subgraph Ops["Operations Layer (utils/)"]
        direction TB
        Admin["admin/<br/>multi-host poll +<br/>broadcast"]
        Audit["remote_desktop/<br/>audit_log<br/>(SHA-256 chain)"]
        Inspector["remote_desktop/<br/>webrtc_inspector"]
        Diag["diagnostics/<br/>self-test"]
        ConfigB["config_bundle/<br/>export/import"]
    end

    subgraph USB["USB"]
        direction TB
        UsbEnum["usb/<br/>list + hotplug events"]
        UsbPass["usb/passthrough/<br/>session · client · ACL(HMAC) ·<br/>libusb · WinUSB · IOKit ·<br/>loopback · webrtc channel · commands"]
    end

    subgraph Remote["Remote Desktop (utils/remote_desktop/)"]
        direction TB
        RDHost["host · webrtc_host ·<br/>signaling · multi_viewer"]
        RDFiles["webrtc_files · file_sync ·<br/>clipboard_sync · audio"]
        RDTrust["trust_list · fingerprint ·<br/>turn_config · lan_discovery"]
    end

    subgraph Backends["Per-OS Backends"]
        direction TB
        Win["windows/<br/>Win32 ctypes"]
        Mac["osx/<br/>pyobjc · Quartz"]
        X11["linux_with_x11/<br/>python-Xlib"]
    end

    Claude --> Stdio
    APIUser --> Stdio
    HTTPClient --> HTTPMCP
    TCPClient --> Socket
    TCPClient --> REST
    Browser --> REST

    Stdio --> Dispatcher
    HTTPMCP --> Dispatcher
    Dispatcher --> Tools
    Dispatcher --> Resources
    Dispatcher --> Prompts
    Dispatcher -.- Context
    Tools -.optional.-> FakeBE

    Tools --> Wrapper
    Tools --> Executor
    Tools --> Vision
    Tools --> Recorder
    Tools --> IOUtils
    Resources --> Recorder
    Resources --> Wrapper

    REST --> Executor
    REST --> Ops
    REST --> USB
    Socket --> Executor
    WebRTC --> Remote
    WebRTC --> UsbPass

    GUIUser --> Wrapper
    GUIUser --> Recorder
    GUIUser --> Ops
    GUIUser --> USB
    GUIUser --> Remote
    CLIUser --> Executor
    Library --> Wrapper
    Library --> Executor
    Library --> Ops

    Admin --> REST
    Inspector -.- WebRTC
    Audit -.- REST
    Audit -.- USB
    UsbPass --> Backends

    Wrapper --> Backends
    Vision -.- Wrapper
    Recorder -.- Executor

je_auto_control/
├── wrapper/                    # Platform-agnostic API layer
│   ├── platform_wrapper.py     # Auto-detects OS and loads the correct backend
│   ├── auto_control_mouse.py   # Mouse operations
│   ├── auto_control_keyboard.py# Keyboard operations
│   ├── auto_control_image.py   # Image recognition (OpenCV template matching)
│   ├── auto_control_screen.py  # Screenshot, screen size, pixel color
│   ├── auto_control_window.py  # Cross-platform window manager facade
│   └── auto_control_record.py  # Action recording/playback
├── windows/                    # Windows-specific backend (Win32 API / ctypes)
├── osx/                        # macOS-specific backend (pyobjc / Quartz)
├── linux_with_x11/             # Linux-specific backend (python-Xlib)
├── gui/                        # PySide6 GUI application
└── utils/
    ├── mcp_server/             # MCP server (stdio + HTTP/SSE) — server, tools/, resources, prompts, audit, rate_limit, fake_backend, plugin_watcher
    ├── executor/               # JSON action executor engine
    ├── callback/               # Callback function executor
    ├── cv2_utils/              # OpenCV screenshot, template matching, video recording
    ├── accessibility/          # UIA (Windows) / AX (macOS) element finder
    ├── vision/                 # VLM-based locator (Anthropic / OpenAI backends)
    ├── ocr/                    # Tesseract-backed text locator
    ├── clipboard/              # Cross-platform clipboard (text + image)
    ├── llm/                    # Plain-language → AC_* action planner
    ├── scheduler/              # Interval + cron scheduler
    ├── hotkey/                 # Global hotkey daemon
    ├── triggers/               # Image/window/pixel/file triggers
    ├── run_history/            # SQLite run log + error-screenshot artifacts
    ├── rest_api/               # Stdlib HTTP/REST server — auth · audit · rate-limit · OpenAPI · /metrics · dashboard · Swagger UI
    ├── admin/                  # Multi-host AdminConsoleClient (poll + broadcast)
    ├── diagnostics/            # System self-test runner + CLI
    ├── config_bundle/          # Single-file user-config export / import
    ├── usb/                    # Cross-platform enumeration, hotplug events, passthrough/{protocol, session, viewer client, loopback, webrtc channel, ACL+HMAC, descriptor, key providers, commands, libusb / WinUSB / IOKit}
    ├── remote_desktop/         # WebRTC host + viewer, signalling, multi-viewer, file/clipboard/audio sync, audit log (hash chain), trust list, TURN config, mDNS discovery, WebRTC stats inspector
    ├── plugin_loader/          # Dynamic AC_* plugin discovery
    ├── socket_server/          # TCP socket server for remote automation
    ├── shell_process/          # Shell command manager
    ├── generate_report/        # HTML / JSON / XML report generators
    ├── test_record/            # Test action recording
    ├── script_vars/            # Script variable interpolation
    ├── watcher/                # Mouse / pixel / log watchers (Live HUD)
    ├── recording_edit/         # Trim, filter, re-scale recorded actions
    ├── json/                   # JSON action file read/write
    ├── project/                # Project scaffolding & templates
    ├── package_manager/        # Dynamic package loading
    ├── logging/                # Logging
    └── exception/              # Custom exception classes

The platform_wrapper.py module automatically detects the current operating system and imports the corresponding backend, so all wrapper functions work identically regardless of platform.

Installation

Basic Installation

pip install je_auto_control

With GUI Support (PySide6)

pip install je_auto_control[gui]

Linux Prerequisites

On Linux, install the following system packages before installing:

sudo apt-get install cmake libssl-dev

Requirements

  • Python >= 3.10
  • pip >= 19.3

Dependencies

Package Purpose
je_open_cv Image recognition (OpenCV template matching)
pillow Screenshot capture
mss Fast multi-monitor screenshot
pyobjc macOS backend (auto-installed on macOS)
python-Xlib Linux X11 backend (auto-installed on Linux)
PySide6 GUI application (optional, install with [gui])
qt-material GUI theme (optional, install with [gui])
uiautomation Windows accessibility backend (optional, loaded on demand)
pytesseract + Tesseract OCR engine (optional, loaded on demand)
anthropic VLM locator — Anthropic backend (optional, loaded on demand)
openai VLM locator — OpenAI backend (optional, loaded on demand)

See Third_Party_License.md for a full list of third-party components and their licenses.

Quick Start

Looking for copy-pasteable end-to-end scripts instead of API snippets? The examples/ directory has 17 self-contained programs covering screenshot + click, OCR, the headless scheduler, remote desktop, the agent loop, observability, recording / replay, runtime variables, window management, hotkeys, image triggers, HTML reports, the MCP stdio bridge, the REST API, the secrets vault, and plugin loading.

Mouse Control

import je_auto_control

# Get current mouse position
x, y = je_auto_control.get_mouse_position()
print(f"Mouse at: ({x}, {y})")

# Move mouse to coordinates
je_auto_control.set_mouse_position(500, 300)

# Left click at current position (use key name)
je_auto_control.click_mouse("mouse_left")

# Right click at specific coordinates
je_auto_control.click_mouse("mouse_right", x=800, y=400)

# Scroll down
je_auto_control.mouse_scroll(scroll_value=5)

Keyboard Control

import je_auto_control

# Press and release a single key
je_auto_control.type_keyboard("a")

# Type a whole string character by character
je_auto_control.write("Hello World")

# Hotkey combination (e.g., Ctrl+C)
je_auto_control.hotkey(["ctrl_l", "c"])

# Check if a key is currently pressed
is_pressed = je_auto_control.check_key_is_press("shift_l")

Image Recognition

import je_auto_control

# Find all occurrences of an image on screen
positions = je_auto_control.locate_all_image("button.png", detect_threshold=0.9)
# Returns: [[x1, y1, x2, y2], ...]

# Find a single image and get its center coordinates
cx, cy = je_auto_control.locate_image_center("icon.png", detect_threshold=0.85)
print(f"Found at: ({cx}, {cy})")

# Find an image and automatically click it
je_auto_control.locate_and_click("submit_button.png", mouse_keycode="mouse_left")

Accessibility Element Finder

Query the OS accessibility tree to locate controls by name, role, or app. Works on Windows (UIA, via uiautomation) and macOS (AX).

import je_auto_control

# List all visible buttons in the Calculator app
elements = je_auto_control.list_accessibility_elements(app_name="Calculator")

# Find a specific element
ok = je_auto_control.find_accessibility_element(name="OK", role="Button")
if ok is not None:
    print(ok.bounds, ok.center)

# Click it directly
je_auto_control.click_accessibility_element(name="OK", app_name="Calculator")

Raises AccessibilityNotAvailableError if no accessibility backend is installed for the current platform.

AI Element Locator (VLM)

When template matching and accessibility both fail, describe the element in plain language and let a vision-language model find its coordinates.

import je_auto_control

# Uses Anthropic by default if ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is set, else OpenAI.
x, y = je_auto_control.locate_by_description("the green Submit button")

# Or click it in one shot
je_auto_control.click_by_description(
    "the cookie-banner 'Accept all' button",
    screen_region=[0, 800, 1920, 1080],   # optional crop
)

Configuration (environment variables only — keys are never persisted or logged):

Variable Effect
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY Enables the Anthropic backend
OPENAI_API_KEY Enables the OpenAI backend
AUTOCONTROL_VLM_BACKEND anthropic or openai to force a backend
AUTOCONTROL_VLM_MODEL Override the default model (e.g. claude-opus-4-7, gpt-4o-mini)

Raises VLMNotAvailableError if neither SDK is installed or no API key is set.

OCR (Text on Screen)

import je_auto_control as ac

# Locate all matches of a piece of text
matches = ac.find_text_matches("Submit")

# Center of the first match, or None
cx, cy = ac.locate_text_center("Submit")

# Click text in one call
ac.click_text("Submit")

# Block until text appears (or timeout)
ac.wait_for_text("Loading complete", timeout=15.0)

Backend selection — set AUTOCONTROL_OCR_BACKEND=tesseract|easyocr|paddleocr or pass backend= per call; otherwise auto-detection picks the first one that imports:

ac.find_text_matches("登入", lang="chi_tra", backend="easyocr")
ac.click_text("Sign in", backend="tesseract")

If Tesseract is not on PATH, point at it explicitly:

ac.set_tesseract_cmd(r"C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe")

Backend install paths and the canonical lang-code table are in docs/source/Eng/doc/ocr_backends/ocr_backends_doc.rst (or the 繁體中文 version).

Dump every recognised text record in a region (or full screen), or search by regex when the text varies:

import je_auto_control as ac

# Every hit in a region as TextMatch records (text, bounding box, confidence)
for match in ac.read_text_in_region(region=[0, 0, 800, 600]):
    print(match.text, match.center, match.confidence)

# Regex — accepts a pattern string or a compiled re.Pattern
for match in ac.find_text_regex(r"Order#\d+"):
    print(match.text, match.center)

GUI: OCR Reader tab.

LLM Action Planner

Translate plain-language descriptions into validated AC_* action lists using an LLM (Anthropic Claude by default). Output is leniently parsed (strips code fences, extracts the first JSON array from prose) and then validated by the same schema the executor uses, so the result can be piped straight into execute_action:

import je_auto_control as ac
from je_auto_control.utils.executor.action_executor import executor

actions = ac.plan_actions(
    "click the Submit button, then type 'done' and save",
    known_commands=executor.known_commands(),
)
executor.execute_action(actions)

# Or in a single call:
ac.run_from_description("open Notepad and type hello", executor=executor)
Variable Effect
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY Enables the Anthropic backend
AUTOCONTROL_LLM_BACKEND anthropic to force a backend
AUTOCONTROL_LLM_MODEL Override the default model (e.g. claude-opus-4-7)

GUI: LLM Planner tab — description box, QThread-backed Plan button, action-list preview, and a Run plan button.

Runtime Variables & Control Flow

The executor resolves ${var} placeholders per command call rather than pre-flattening, so nested body / then / else lists keep their placeholders and re-bind on every iteration. Combined with new mutation commands, scripts can drive themselves from data without Python glue:

[
    ["AC_set_var", {"name": "items", "value": ["alpha", "beta"]}],
    ["AC_set_var", {"name": "i", "value": 0}],
    ["AC_for_each", {
        "items": "${items}", "as": "name",
        "body": [
            ["AC_inc_var", {"name": "i"}],
            ["AC_if_var", {
                "name": "i", "op": "ge", "value": 2,
                "then": [["AC_break"]], "else": []
            }]
        ]
    }]
]

AC_if_var operators: eq, ne, lt, le, gt, ge, contains, startswith, endswith. GUI: Variables tab — live view of executor.variables with single-set, JSON seed, and clear-all controls.

Remote Desktop

Stream this machine's screen and accept remote input, or view and control another machine. The wire format is a length-prefixed framing on raw TCP (no extra deps), starting with an HMAC-SHA256 challenge / response handshake; viewers that fail auth are dropped before they can see a frame. JPEG frames are produced at the configured FPS / quality and broadcast to authenticated viewers via a shared latest-frame slot, so a slow viewer drops frames instead of blocking the rest. Viewer input is JSON, validated against an allowlist, and applied through the existing wrappers.

# 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.send_input({"action": "type", "text": "hello"})
viewer.disconnect()

GUI: Remote Desktop tab opens to the Quick Connect screen (AnyDesk-style) by default — huge Host ID on one side, a single input that accepts host:port, ws://, wss://, or a 9-digit Host ID on the other, with Connect and Start hosting as the two primary buttons. Recent connections are remembered across sessions. Advanced per-transport sub-tabs (legacy TCP / WS host + viewer, WebRTC host + viewer with manual SDP / custom codecs / TLS pinning) stay one click away. WebRTC sub-tabs lazy-load so a stock install without the [webrtc] extra still opens the tab.

⚠️ Anyone with the host:port and token gets full mouse / keyboard control of the host machine. Default bind is 127.0.0.1; expose externally only via SSH tunnel or TLS front-end. The token is the only line of defence — treat it like a password.

Quick Connect headless API. The transport coordinator that backs the GUI input box is also exported, so scripts can dispatch the same way:

from je_auto_control import parse_remote_desktop_target
parse_remote_desktop_target("192.168.1.10:5555")
# ConnectTarget(kind='tcp', host='192.168.1.10', port=5555, ...)
parse_remote_desktop_target("ws://hub:8765/desk")
# ConnectTarget(kind='ws', host='hub', port=8765, path='/desk')
parse_remote_desktop_target("123-456-789")
# ConnectTarget(kind='webrtc_id', host_id='123456789')

Connection approval + view-only mode. Optional callback gates every incoming session AnyDesk-style. Returning "view_only" admits the viewer but drops their INPUT messages; returning a falsy value (or raising) sends AUTH_FAIL "rejected by host":

from je_auto_control import RemoteDesktopHost, PendingViewer

def gate(p: PendingViewer) -> str:
    if p.address[0].startswith("10."):
        return "view_only"
    return "full"  # or True

host = RemoteDesktopHost(token="tok", on_pending_viewer=gate)

IP allowlist (CIDR + exact IPs). Reject peers outside the configured ranges before TLS / auth runs, so attackers can't probe further:

host = RemoteDesktopHost(
    token="tok", ip_allowlist=["10.0.0.0/8", "192.168.1.100"],
)

One-time share codes — extra tokens that self-destruct on first successful auth, ideal for client-support workflows:

host = RemoteDesktopHost(token="tok", single_use_tokens=["abc123"])
host.add_single_use_token("9k4ndx")    # rotate at runtime
host.revoke_single_use_token("abc123") # cancel before it's used

TOTP 2FA (RFC 6238, stdlib only). Layer a 6-digit OTP on top of the token; host accepts ±1 step of clock drift:

from je_auto_control.utils.remote_desktop.totp import (
    generate_secret, generate_code, provisioning_uri,
)
secret = generate_secret()
print(provisioning_uri(secret, account="alice"))  # otpauth:// URI for QR

host = RemoteDesktopHost(token="tok", totp_secret=secret)
viewer = RemoteDesktopViewer(
    host=..., token="tok", totp_code=generate_code(secret),
)

Multi-monitor selection. Capture one specific monitor instead of the combined virtual desktop:

from je_auto_control import list_host_monitors, RemoteDesktopHost
print(list_host_monitors())
# [{'index': 0, 'is_combined': True, ...},
#  {'index': 1, 'left': 0,   'top': 0, ...},
#  {'index': 2, 'left': 1920, ...}]
host = RemoteDesktopHost(token="tok", monitor_index=1)

Remote cursor overlay. Host broadcasts cursor position at 30 Hz (deduped on still desktops); the viewer's popup window draws an arrow on top of the JPEG stream so you can see exactly where the host's pointer is. Disable via enable_cursor_broadcast=False.

Multi-viewer collaborative cursors + chat. Two new message types (CHAT and CURSOR with viewer_id). Use a MultiViewerHost to relay one viewer's pointer to the others; pair with the chat channel for ad-hoc text between operators:

host = RemoteDesktopHost(
    token="tok", on_chat=lambda sender, text: print(sender, ":", text),
)
host.broadcast_chat("session starts in 30s")
host.broadcast_viewer_cursor("alice", 200, 300)

viewer = RemoteDesktopViewer(
    host=..., on_chat=lambda s, t: ...,
    on_viewer_cursor=lambda vid, x, y: ...,
)
viewer.send_chat("ack")

Relative mouse mode (FPS / CAD). New input action that sends deltas instead of absolute coordinates:

viewer.send_input({"action": "mouse_move_relative", "dx": 5, "dy": -3})

Motion-aware capture. The capture loop now hashes each encoded JPEG; identical frames are skipped, so a static desktop produces ~zero bandwidth. New viewers are seeded with the latest frame on auth so they never see a black popup.

Live stats (FPS / kbps / totals over a 3-second window):

viewer.stats()
# {'fps': 24.3, 'kbps': 4801.2, 'frames': 720.0, 'bytes': 1.8e7, 'uptime': 30.2}

JPEG sequence recorder (no PyAV needed). TCP-path session capture: each frame written to disk plus manifest.json so it can be replayed at original cadence:

from je_auto_control.utils.remote_desktop.jpeg_recorder import (
    JpegSequenceRecorder,
)
rec = JpegSequenceRecorder("~/recordings/2026-05-23")
rec.start()
viewer = RemoteDesktopViewer(host=..., on_frame=rec.record_frame)
# ... session ...
rec.stop()  # writes manifest.json next to the .jpg files

TCP relay (WebRTC fallback). When P2P fails (strict NAT, mobile CGNAT, hotel Wi-Fi), both peers connect outbound to a relay and exchange a shared 32-byte session ID; the relay pipes bytes between them. Same module ships an encode_handshake(role, session_id) helper for clients:

from je_auto_control.utils.remote_desktop.relay import RelayServer
relay = RelayServer(bind="0.0.0.0", port=9000)  # NOSONAR  # public relay
relay.start()

Service installer (unattended host). python -m je_auto_control.utils.remote_desktop.host_service ... exposes configure / init / run plus per-platform installers: install-windows-service / uninstall-windows-service (pywin32), generate-launchd / uninstall-launchd, generate-systemd / uninstall-systemd.

Encrypted transports + alternate protocols. Pass an ssl_context to either RemoteDesktopHost or RemoteDesktopViewer to wrap every connection in TLS. For firewall-friendly access, use the in-tree WebSocket variants (no extra deps) — same protocol, RFC 6455 framing, and wss:// if you also pass ssl_context:

from je_auto_control import (
    WebSocketDesktopHost, WebSocketDesktopViewer,
)
host = WebSocketDesktopHost(token="hunter2", ssl_context=server_ctx)
viewer = WebSocketDesktopViewer(
    host="example.com", port=443, token="hunter2",
    ssl_context=client_ctx, expected_host_id="123456789",
)

Persistent Host ID. Every host owns a stable 9-digit numeric ID (persisted at ~/.je_auto_control/remote_host_id), announced in AUTH_OK and verifiable via the viewer's expected_host_id:

print(host.host_id)            # e.g. "123456789"
viewer = RemoteDesktopViewer(
    host=..., port=..., token=...,
    expected_host_id="123456789",   # AuthenticationError on mismatch
)

Audio streaming (host → viewer). Optional sounddevice dep; opt in with an AudioCaptureConfig on the host, attach an AudioPlayer (or your own callback) on the viewer:

from je_auto_control.utils.remote_desktop import AudioCaptureConfig
host = RemoteDesktopHost(
    token="tok",
    audio_config=AudioCaptureConfig(enabled=True),    # default mic
)
# Or pick a loopback / monitor device:
# audio_config=AudioCaptureConfig(enabled=True, device=12)

from je_auto_control.utils.remote_desktop import AudioPlayer
player = AudioPlayer(); player.start()
viewer = RemoteDesktopViewer(host=..., on_audio=player.play)

Clipboard sync (text + image, bidirectional). Explicit per-call — no auto-poll loops. Image clipboard works on Windows (CF_DIB via ctypes) and Linux (xclip -t image/png); macOS get is supported via Pillow ImageGrab, set requires PyObjC.

viewer.send_clipboard_text("hello")
viewer.send_clipboard_image(open("logo.png", "rb").read())
host.broadcast_clipboard_text("greetings")

File transfer with progress. Bidirectional, chunked, arbitrary destination path, no size cap; the GUI viewer also accepts drag-drop:

viewer.send_file(
    "local.bin", "/tmp/uploaded.bin",
    on_progress=lambda tid, done, total: print(done, total),
)
host.send_file_to_viewers("local.bin", "/tmp/from_host.bin")

⚠️ Path is unrestricted and there is no aggregate size limit. Anyone with the token can write any file to any location and can fill the disk — keep "trusted token holders == trusted users" in mind, or wrap with your own FileReceiver subclass that vets destination paths.

Clipboard

import je_auto_control as ac
ac.set_clipboard("hello")
text = ac.get_clipboard()

Backends: Windows (Win32 via ctypes), macOS (pbcopy/pbpaste), Linux (xclip or xsel).

Screenshot

import je_auto_control

# Take a full-screen screenshot and save to file
je_auto_control.pil_screenshot("screenshot.png")

# Take a screenshot of a specific region [x1, y1, x2, y2]
je_auto_control.pil_screenshot("region.png", screen_region=[100, 100, 500, 400])

# Get screen resolution
width, height = je_auto_control.screen_size()

# Get pixel color at coordinates
color = je_auto_control.get_pixel(500, 300)

Action Recording & Playback

import je_auto_control
import time

# Start recording mouse and keyboard events
je_auto_control.record()

time.sleep(10)  # Record for 10 seconds

# Stop recording and get the action list
actions = je_auto_control.stop_record()

# Clean up the recording before replay: collapse runs of consecutive
# mouse-move samples into their final position (often shrinks a raw
# recording by an order of magnitude without changing replay behaviour)
actions = je_auto_control.dedupe_moves(actions)

# Replay the recorded actions
je_auto_control.execute_action(actions)

Non-destructive recording editors (all return a new list): dedupe_moves (collapse mouse-move runs), merge_sleeps (sum consecutive AC_sleep runs), trim_actions, insert_action, remove_action, filter_actions, adjust_delays (scale AC_sleep delays), scale_coordinates (replay at a different resolution). Exposed over MCP as ac_dedupe_moves / ac_merge_sleeps / ac_trim_actions / ac_adjust_delays / ac_scale_coordinates.

JSON Action Scripting

Create a JSON action file (actions.json):

[
    ["AC_set_mouse_position", {"x": 500, "y": 300}],
    ["AC_click_mouse", {"mouse_keycode": "mouse_left"}],
    ["AC_write", {"write_string": "Hello from AutoControl"}],
    ["AC_screenshot", {"file_path": "result.png"}],
    ["AC_hotkey", {"key_code_list": ["ctrl_l", "s"]}]
]

Execute it:

import je_auto_control

# Execute from file
je_auto_control.execute_action(je_auto_control.read_action_json("actions.json"))

# Or execute from a list directly
je_auto_control.execute_action([
    ["AC_set_mouse_position", {"x": 100, "y": 200}],
    ["AC_click_mouse", {"mouse_keycode": "mouse_left"}]
])

Available action commands:

Category Commands
Mouse AC_click_mouse, AC_set_mouse_position, AC_get_mouse_position, AC_get_mouse_table, AC_press_mouse, AC_release_mouse, AC_mouse_scroll, AC_mouse_left, AC_mouse_right, AC_mouse_middle
Keyboard AC_type_keyboard, AC_press_keyboard_key, AC_release_keyboard_key, AC_write, AC_hotkey, AC_check_key_is_press, AC_get_keyboard_keys_table
Image AC_locate_all_image, AC_locate_image_center, AC_locate_and_click
Screen AC_screen_size, AC_screenshot
Accessibility AC_a11y_list, AC_a11y_find, AC_a11y_click
VLM (AI Locator) AC_vlm_locate, AC_vlm_click
OCR AC_locate_text, AC_click_text, AC_wait_text, AC_read_text_in_region, AC_find_text_regex
LLM planner AC_llm_plan, AC_llm_run
Clipboard AC_clipboard_get, AC_clipboard_set
Window AC_list_windows, AC_focus_window, AC_wait_window, AC_close_window
Flow control AC_loop, AC_break, AC_continue, AC_if_image_found, AC_if_pixel, AC_if_var, AC_while_image, AC_while_var, AC_for_each, AC_wait_image, AC_wait_pixel, AC_sleep, AC_retry, AC_try
Variables AC_set_var, AC_get_var, AC_inc_var
Remote desktop AC_start_remote_host, AC_stop_remote_host, AC_remote_host_status, AC_remote_connect, AC_remote_disconnect, AC_remote_viewer_status, AC_remote_send_input
Record AC_record, AC_stop_record, AC_set_record_enable
Report AC_generate_html, AC_generate_json, AC_generate_xml, AC_generate_html_report, AC_generate_json_report, AC_generate_xml_report
Run history AC_history_list, AC_history_clear
Project AC_create_project
Shell AC_shell_command
Process AC_execute_process
Executor AC_execute_action, AC_execute_files, AC_add_package_to_executor, AC_add_package_to_callback_executor
MCP server AC_start_mcp_server, AC_start_mcp_http_server

MCP Server (Use AutoControl from Claude)

Expose AutoControl as a Model Context Protocol server so any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, custom Anthropic / OpenAI tool-use loops) can drive the host machine. Stdlib-only — JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio or HTTP+SSE.

Register with Claude Code:

claude mcp add autocontrol -- python -m je_auto_control.utils.mcp_server

Register with Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "autocontrol": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "je_auto_control.utils.mcp_server"]
    }
  }
}

Start programmatically:

import je_auto_control as ac

# Stdio (blocks until stdin closes)
ac.start_mcp_stdio_server()

# Or HTTP / SSE with bearer-token auth + optional TLS
ac.start_mcp_http_server(host="127.0.0.1", port=9940,
                         auth_token="hunter2")

Inspect the catalogue without starting the server:

je_auto_control_mcp --list-tools
je_auto_control_mcp --list-tools --read-only
je_auto_control_mcp --list-resources
je_auto_control_mcp --list-prompts

What ships:

Surface Coverage
Tools (~90) mouse · keyboard · drag · screen / multi-monitor · screenshot-as-image · diff · OCR · image · windows (move/min/max/restore/...) · clipboard text+image · process / shell · recording · screen recording · scheduler / triggers / hotkeys · accessibility tree · VLM locator · executor · history
Aliases click, type, screenshot, find_image, drag, shell, wait_image, ... — toggle with JE_AUTOCONTROL_MCP_ALIASES=0
Resources autocontrol://files/<name>, autocontrol://history, autocontrol://commands, autocontrol://screen/live (with resources/subscribe)
Prompts automate_ui_task, record_and_generalize, compare_screenshots, find_widget, explain_action_file
Protocol tools / resources / prompts / sampling / roots / logging / progress / cancellation / list_changed / elicitation
Transports stdio, HTTP POST /mcp, SSE streaming when Accept: text/event-stream
Safety tool annotations · JE_AUTOCONTROL_MCP_READONLY · JE_AUTOCONTROL_MCP_CONFIRM_DESTRUCTIVE · audit log · token-bucket rate limiter · auto-screenshot on error
Ops bearer-token auth · TLS via ssl_context · PluginWatcher hot-reload · JE_AUTOCONTROL_FAKE_BACKEND=1 for CI

See docs/source/Eng/doc/mcp_server/mcp_server_doc.rst for the full reference (or the 繁體中文 version).

⚠️ The MCP server can move the mouse, send keystrokes, capture the screen, and execute arbitrary AC_* actions. Only register it with MCP clients you trust. HTTP defaults to 127.0.0.1; binding to 0.0.0.0 requires explicit reason and must be paired with auth_token plus ssl_context.

Scheduler (Interval & Cron)

import je_auto_control as ac

# Interval job — run every 30 seconds
job = ac.default_scheduler.add_job(
    script_path="scripts/poll.json", interval_seconds=30, repeat=True,
)

# Cron job — 09:00 on weekdays (minute hour dom month dow)
cron_job = ac.default_scheduler.add_cron_job(
    script_path="scripts/daily.json", cron_expression="0 9 * * 1-5",
)

ac.default_scheduler.start()

Both flavours coexist; job.is_cron tells them apart.

Global Hotkey Daemon

Bind OS-level hotkeys to action JSON scripts. Cross-platform — Windows uses RegisterHotKey, macOS uses CGEventTap (requires Accessibility permission), Linux X11 uses XGrabKey (Wayland not supported). The same call sites work everywhere; the daemon picks the backend at start() time.

from je_auto_control import default_hotkey_daemon

default_hotkey_daemon.bind("ctrl+alt+1", "scripts/greet.json")
default_hotkey_daemon.start()

Event Triggers

Poll-based triggers that fire a script when a condition becomes true:

from je_auto_control import (
    default_trigger_engine, ImageAppearsTrigger,
    WindowAppearsTrigger, PixelColorTrigger, FilePathTrigger,
)

default_trigger_engine.add(ImageAppearsTrigger(
    trigger_id="", script_path="scripts/click_ok.json",
    image_path="templates/ok_button.png", threshold=0.85, repeat=True,
))
default_trigger_engine.start()

Run History

Every run from the scheduler, trigger engine, hotkey daemon, REST API, and manual GUI replay is recorded to ~/.je_auto_control/history.db. Errors automatically attach a screenshot under ~/.je_auto_control/artifacts/run_{id}_{ms}.png for post-mortem.

from je_auto_control import default_history_store

for run in default_history_store.list_runs(limit=20):
    print(run.id, run.source, run.status, run.artifact_path)

The GUI Run History tab exposes filter/refresh/clear and double-click-to-open on the artifact column.

Report Generation

import je_auto_control

# Enable test recording first
je_auto_control.test_record_instance.set_record_enable(True)

# ... perform automation actions ...
je_auto_control.set_mouse_position(100, 200)
je_auto_control.click_mouse("mouse_left")

# Generate reports
je_auto_control.generate_html_report("test_report")   # -> test_report.html
je_auto_control.generate_json_report("test_report")   # -> test_report.json
je_auto_control.generate_xml_report("test_report")    # -> test_report.xml

# Or get report content as string
html_string = je_auto_control.generate_html()
json_string = je_auto_control.generate_json()
xml_string = je_auto_control.generate_xml()

Reports include: function name, parameters, timestamp, and exception info (if any) for each recorded action. HTML reports display successful actions in cyan and failed actions in red.

Observability (Prometheus / OpenTelemetry)

Stdlib-only metric primitives plus an OpenTelemetry-compatible tracer fallback. The executor and agent loop emit call counts and latency histograms automatically — no per-script wiring required.

import je_auto_control as ac

# Expose /metrics on http://127.0.0.1:9090 for Prometheus to scrape.
exporter = ac.default_metrics_exporter()
exporter.start()

# Add your own metric — same shapes as prometheus_client.
counter = ac.default_metric_registry().register(ac.MetricCounter(
    "myapp_widgets_built_total", "widgets built",
    label_names=("kind",),
))
counter.inc(labels={"kind": "blue"})

# Wrap a callable in a span — no-op until opentelemetry-api is installed.
@ac.traced("my_pipeline.process_one")
def process_one(item): ...

Built-in metrics are listed in docs/source/Eng/doc/observability/observability_doc.rst (or the 繁體中文 version).

Remote Automation (Socket / REST)

Two servers are available — a raw TCP socket and a stdlib HTTP/REST server. Both default to 127.0.0.1; binding to 0.0.0.0 is an explicit, documented opt-in.

import je_auto_control as ac

# TCP socket server (default: 127.0.0.1:9938)
ac.start_autocontrol_socket_server(host="127.0.0.1", port=9938)

# REST API server (default: 127.0.0.1:9939)
ac.start_rest_api_server(host="127.0.0.1", port=9939)
# Endpoints:
#   GET  /health           liveness probe
#   GET  /jobs             scheduler job list
#   POST /execute          body: {"actions": [...]}

Client example:

import socket
import json

sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
sock.connect(("localhost", 9938))

# Send an automation command
command = json.dumps([
    ["AC_set_mouse_position", {"x": 500, "y": 300}],
    ["AC_click_mouse", {"mouse_keycode": "mouse_left"}]
])
sock.sendall(command.encode("utf-8"))

# Receive response
response = sock.recv(8192).decode("utf-8")
print(response)
sock.close()

Plugin Loader

Drop .py files defining top-level AC_* callables into a directory, then register them as executor commands at runtime:

from je_auto_control import (
    load_plugin_directory, register_plugin_commands,
)

commands = load_plugin_directory("./my_plugins")
register_plugin_commands(commands)

# Now usable from any JSON action script:
# [["AC_greet", {"name": "world"}]]

Warning: Plugin files execute arbitrary Python on load. Only load from directories you control.

Shell Command Execution

import je_auto_control

# Using the default shell manager
je_auto_control.default_shell_manager.exec_shell("echo Hello")
je_auto_control.default_shell_manager.pull_text()  # Print captured output

# Or create a custom ShellManager
shell = je_auto_control.ShellManager(shell_encoding="utf-8")
shell.exec_shell("ls -la")
shell.pull_text()
shell.exit_program()

Screen Recording

import je_auto_control
import time

# Method 1: ScreenRecorder (manages multiple recordings)
recorder = je_auto_control.ScreenRecorder()
recorder.start_new_record(
    recorder_name="my_recording",
    path_and_filename="output.avi",
    codec="XVID",
    frame_per_sec=30,
    resolution=(1920, 1080)
)
time.sleep(10)
recorder.stop_record("my_recording")

# Method 2: RecordingThread (simple single recording, outputs MP4)
recording = je_auto_control.RecordingThread(video_name="my_video", fps=20)
recording.start()
time.sleep(10)
recording.stop()

Callback Executor

Execute an automation function and trigger a callback upon completion:

import je_auto_control

def my_callback():
    print("Action completed!")

# Execute set_mouse_position then call my_callback
je_auto_control.callback_executor.callback_function(
    trigger_function_name="AC_set_mouse_position",
    callback_function=my_callback,
    x=500, y=300
)

# With callback parameters
def on_done(message):
    print(f"Done: {message}")

je_auto_control.callback_executor.callback_function(
    trigger_function_name="AC_click_mouse",
    callback_function=on_done,
    callback_function_param={"message": "Click finished"},
    callback_param_method="kwargs",
    mouse_keycode="mouse_left"
)

Package Manager

Dynamically load external Python packages into the executor at runtime:

import je_auto_control

# Add all functions/classes from a package to the executor
je_auto_control.package_manager.add_package_to_executor("os")

# Now you can use os functions in JSON action scripts:
# ["os_getcwd", {}]
# ["os_listdir", {"path": "."}]

Project Management

Scaffold a project directory structure with template files:

import je_auto_control

# Create a project structure
je_auto_control.create_project_dir(project_path="./my_project", parent_name="AutoControl")

# This creates:
# my_project/
# └── AutoControl/
#     ├── keyword/
#     │   ├── keyword1.json        # Template action file
#     │   ├── keyword2.json        # Template action file
#     │   └── bad_keyword_1.json   # Error handling template
#     └── executor/
#         ├── executor_one_file.py  # Execute single file example
#         ├── executor_folder.py    # Execute folder example
#         └── executor_bad_file.py  # Error handling example

Window Management

Send events directly to specific windows (Windows and Linux only):

import je_auto_control

# Send keyboard event to a window by title
je_auto_control.send_key_event_to_window("Notepad", keycode="a")

# Send mouse event to a window handle
je_auto_control.send_mouse_event_to_window(window_handle, mouse_keycode="mouse_left", x=100, y=50)

GUI Application

Launch the built-in graphical interface (requires [gui] extra):

import je_auto_control
je_auto_control.start_autocontrol_gui()

Or from the command line:

python -m je_auto_control

Command-Line Interface

AutoControl can be used directly from the command line:

# Execute a single action file
python -m je_auto_control -e actions.json

# Execute all action files in a directory
python -m je_auto_control -d ./action_files/

# Execute a JSON string directly
python -m je_auto_control --execute_str '[["AC_screenshot", {"file_path": "test.png"}]]'

# Create a project template
python -m je_auto_control -c ./my_project

A richer subcommand CLI built on the headless APIs:

# Run a script, optionally with variables, and/or a dry-run
python -m je_auto_control.cli run script.json
python -m je_auto_control.cli run script.json --var name=alice --dry-run

# List scheduler jobs
python -m je_auto_control.cli list-jobs

# Start the socket or REST server
python -m je_auto_control.cli start-server --port 9938
python -m je_auto_control.cli start-rest   --port 9939

--var name=value is parsed as JSON when possible (so count=10 becomes an int), otherwise treated as a string.

Platform Support

Platform Status Backend Notes
Windows 10 / 11 Supported Win32 API (ctypes) Full feature support
macOS 10.15+ Supported pyobjc / Quartz Action recording not available; send_key_event_to_window / send_mouse_event_to_window not supported
Linux (X11) Supported python-Xlib Full feature support
Linux (Wayland) Not supported — May be added in a future release
Raspberry Pi 3B / 4B Supported python-Xlib Runs on X11

Development

Setting Up

git clone https://github.com/Intergration-Automation-Testing/AutoControl.git
cd AutoControl
pip install -r dev_requirements.txt

Reproducible installs use the committed uv.lock:

uv sync               # install pinned versions across the whole dep tree
uv lock --upgrade     # refresh after editing pyproject.toml

Running Tests

# Unit tests
python -m pytest test/unit_test/

# Integration tests
python -m pytest test/integrated_test/

Project Links

License

MIT License © JE-Chen. See Third_Party_License.md for the licenses of bundled and optional third-party dependencies.

Project details

Verified details

These details have been verified by PyPI
Maintainers
Avatar for JE-Chen from gravatar.com JE-Chen
Meta

Unverified details

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Project links
Meta
  • Requires: Python >=3.10
  • Provides-Extra: gui , webrtc , signaling , discovery , pdf , office , fuzzy , s3 , locale
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