Developers Release Desktop Automation Tool usecomputer, Written in Zig Compatible with Multiple AI Programming Assistants

Gate News reports that on March 25, open-source developer Tommaso De Rossi released a desktop automation command-line tool called usecomputer. The tool is written in Zig as a native binary, does not depend on the Node.js runtime, and allows AI programming assistants (including Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, etc.) to directly control the desktop’s mouse, keyboard, and screenshot functions. The tool supports macOS and Linux (X11, Wayland via XWayland). usecomputer offers CLI commands for screenshots, mouse movement/clicking/dragging/scrolling, keyboard input, and hotkey composition, equipped with a coordinate mapping system (coord-map) that automatically converts pixel coordinates in screenshots to actual screen coordinates. Screenshot output defaults to scaling the longest edge to 1568 pixels to fit the model context window. Additionally, the tool supports the Kitty Graphics Protocol; after setting environment variables, screenshots can be directly embedded into the model context. De Rossi’s previously developed browser automation tool Playwriter has received over 3,200 GitHub stars. usecomputer is an extension from browser automation to desktop automation. The project is independently split from his kimaki monorepo and offers both CLI and Node.js library options, with complete integration examples for OpenAI’s computer tool and Anthropic’s computer use included in the README.