ghostex-computer-use

A workflow for controlling native macOS applications and desktop interfaces through Ghostex Computer Use, including supported browser windows and system dialogs.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to automate native macOS apps, browser controls, native dialogs, and browser engines without a typed page interface, when Trycua is installed and permissions are available.
Why use it?
It explains how to operate desktop software when ordinary web-page tools or application APIs cannot reach the needed interface.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/maddada/ghostex/ghostex-computer-use
Any agent
npx skills add maddada/Ghostex --skill ghostex-computer-use
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/maddada/Ghostex

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 58 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,211 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00058 $0.01211
Opus 5 $0.00029 $0.00606
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00242
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00121

Measured 3d ago against content hash fca92a9c12e0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

ghostex-computer-use scanned grade C 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 3d 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.

Hidden instructionshighPrompt injection

Directives inside HTML comments, invisible characters or bidirectional overrides are read by the model and not by the person reviewing the file.

<!-- CDXC:CuaPermissions 2026-05-29-12:21: State checks must be read-only. The default Trycua permission check can ask macOS to show missing-grant prompts, so the Ghostex wrapper uses prompt:false and only sends users to
skills/ghostex-computer-use/SKILL.md · 130 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 130 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

ghostex-computer-use

Use this skill when a task needs native macOS app automation through Ghostex Desktop Control. This skill is intentionally a wrapper around $cua-driver: if the $cua-driver skill is available, load it for current schemas and safety rules, but issue operations through the cua-driver CLI.

Use the CLI, not MCP. Do not configure, register, or invoke a Trycua MCP server for this workflow.

Route browser work by surface:

  • Use $ghostex-browser-use for web content in external Chrome, Chromium, Edge, or supported Electron apps through Trycua's typed browser tools.
  • Use $ghostex-embedded-browser-use for browser panes built into Ghostex.
  • Continue with this skill for native apps, browser chrome, native browser dialogs, or browser engines that do not expose an exact typed page route.

Requirements

  • Trycua must be installed. Ghostex installs it from first-launch setup or Settings > Integrations, where the Trycua card runs the official installer in a command pane.
  • Trycua must be available as cua-driver (see Windows and WSL below).
  • macOS Accessibility and Screen Recording permissions must be granted for Trycua.

Check the machine state before acting:

which cua-driver
cua-driver status
cua-driver check_permissions '{"prompt":false}'

If the daemon is not running, start it with:

open -n -g -a CuaDriver --args serve

Windows and WSL

On Windows, Trycua installs on the Windows side. A Ghostex agent session runs inside the WSL distribution, where there is no Linux cua-driver binary, so which cua-driver failing there does not mean Trycua is missing. Call it across the interop boundary through powershell.exe instead:

powershell.exe -NoProfile -Command "cua-driver status"
powershell.exe -NoProfile -Command "cua-driver check_permissions '{\"prompt\":false}'"
powershell.exe -NoProfile -Command "cua-driver list_windows '{\"pid\":1234}'"

Read the full file on GitHub · 130 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 130 lines · 58 tokens per session scan C fca92a9c12e0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ghostex-computer-use is a skill published in the GitHub repository maddada/Ghostex (714 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 58 tokens to every session and 1,211 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (hidden instructions). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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