What is macos-app-automation?

A guide for checking whether a coding agent can control a native macOS app, using AppleScript, URL schemes, accessibility controls, or screen-based actions.

Use it to configure, troubleshoot, or verify control of a specific Mac app.

It helps determine which kind of macOS automation an app supports and how to verify that actions completed correctly.

macos-app-automation — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by AtlasOmnia

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add AtlasOmnia/donna-starter --skill macos-app-automation

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AtlasOmnia/donna-starter

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/atlasomnia/donna-starter/macos-app-automation/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/atlasomnia/donna-starter/macos-app-automation)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/atlasomnia/donna-starter/macos-app-automation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/atlasomnia/donna-starter/macos-app-automation/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/atlasomnia/donna-starter/macos-app-automation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/atlasomnia/donna-starter/macos-app-automation.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 43 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 5,180 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits

NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026

SkillSpector: 4 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

medium Rogue Agent · line 51
Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.

Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
medium Privilege Escalation · line 209
Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.

Fix: Avoid sudo/root unless strictly required. Prefer least-privilege patterns. If elevation is needed, document the justification and scope.
medium Rogue Agent · line 212
Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.

Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
medium Rogue Agent · line 288
Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.

Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.

How audits are shown

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00043	$0.05180
Opus 5	$0.00022	$0.02590
Sonnet 5	$0.00009	$0.01036
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00518

Measured 10d ago against content hash 57ab821d545d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

macos-app-automation scanned grade B with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

5. If WebDriver still reports Remote Automation disabled, the user must run `sudo safaridriver --enable`; never type their administrator password.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

macos-app-automation — 100% identical, 0 lines differ

skills/apple/macos-app-automation/SKILL.md · 323 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 323 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

macOS App Automation

Use this skill when the user asks whether Hermes can control a native macOS app, or asks you to verify, configure, or troubleshoot AppleScript/Automation access for an app.

Preferred automation ladder

AppleScript dictionary / app scripting API

Best for structured app data and repeatable operations.
Verify with the app's bundle ID, version, and scripting dictionary before promising coverage.

App URL scheme

Good for quick-add or deep-link actions when documented by the app.

System Events / Accessibility scripting

Useful for menu items and UI operations not exposed in the app dictionary.

Hermes computer_use

Last-resort GUI operation for UI-only features. Capture first, click by element index, verify after state changes.
If the wrapper reports that its cua-driver session ended, recover the same session before concluding GUI control is blocked. If Hermes has already rejected repeated identical calls, change the wrapper call signature or continue through direct cua-driver call operations rather than retrying the same arguments.
Do not turn an internal wrapper guardrail into the user-facing result. Recover through the direct driver path first; if a real blocker remains, report it in task language with the evidence that distinguishes it (for example, asleep display versus locked login screen).
On an unattended Mac, wake a black/asleep display non-destructively and recapture before diagnosing capture failure. A visible login/password screen is a credential gate: never type, request, infer, or bypass the password, and never claim a click reached an app behind the lock screen without verified state change.
After the user unlocks the Mac for a long unattended native-app workflow, start a tracked /usr/bin/caffeinate -dimsu process immediately and stop it during cleanup; caffeinate -u -t 2 wakes only and does not prevent a later relock.
Electron/webview drawers can retain off-screen controls in the accessibility tree with zero- or one-pixel bounds. Programmatic set_value by accessible label may still work, but never use an off-screen element as a human handoff target—especially for credentials. Scroll the exact row into view, recapture, require visible nonzero bounds, focus the intended field, and verify the adjacent action before asking the user to paste or confirm. After Save, recapture neighboring ordinary fields such as Endpoint and Model to catch a paste that landed in the wrong control without echoing its value.
Treat a modal dismissal as coordinate-invalidating: perform one click, recapture, and only then choose the next target. Never batch raw coordinate clicks across a dialog close.
See references/cua-session-recovery.md for deterministic session revival, black-capture diagnosis, lock-screen handling, repeated-call-guard fallback, and modal-safe clicking.

Read the full file on GitHub · 323 lines

Files

What ships with it

12 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

10d ago First seen · 323 lines · 43 tokens per session scan B 57ab821d545d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

macos-app-automation is a skill published in the GitHub repository AtlasOmnia/donna-starter (110 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 43 tokens to every session and 5,180 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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