The previous version called target:'all' on every step unconditionally,
which caused the AI to rewrite steps that already had good titles and
descriptions — often making them worse or inaccurate.
New behaviour:
- Build a queue of only the steps that are actually missing content
(placeholder title and/or empty description).
- Determine target per step: 'title', 'description', or 'all' — only
fill what is blank; leave existing user-written text completely alone.
- If all steps already have titles and descriptions, show a toast and stop.
- Call reload() once at the end instead of patching this.steps mid-loop,
so the editor and step list both update atomically from the store.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Previously the menu action only ran AI generation on the selected step.
Now it loops through all steps sequentially, showing progress ("AI:
filling step N of M…"), then reloads the visible step when done.
Partial failures are reported in the final toast.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
The model was producing Text and Code blocks on every 'generate all
fields' action — uninstructed, generic, and never useful for the user.
Blocks are only appropriate when the user explicitly edits an existing
block (target === 'block'). For title/description/all generation:
- Schema collapses to { "title", "description" } — no blocks key
- targetText no longer mentions blocks
- allowedBlockNote is null (omitted from prompt)
- Rule explicitly says "Do NOT add any blocks array"
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
TryLoadUia() blocked for several seconds loading reflection assemblies at
ClickProcessorLoop startup, during which no CLICK events were emitted.
Restored MouseHookCallback to emit CTX + CLICK synchronously (fast Win32
only) as before — no startup cost, clicks are never delayed.
The wider OCR crop and smarter search-results title fallback are kept.
UIAutomation element lookup can be revisited with a pre-warmed approach.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
**Root cause**
When OCR fails, the title fell back to the browser window title. For a
click on a search-results page, the window title reflects the *previous*
search query ("oracle - Google Search"), producing "Search for Oracle"
even though the user is clicking a link *on* that page.
**Fix 1: UIAutomation element label from the click watcher**
The C# click-watcher hook now enriches each click in a background thread
(ClickProcessorLoop) rather than in the hook callback:
- MouseHookCallback captures window title synchronously (fast Win32),
then queues a PendingClick and returns immediately.
- ClickProcessorLoop calls AutomationElement.FromPoint() via reflection
(no compile-time assembly reference → no startup failure if UIA is
absent). Wrapped in a 300ms timeout thread so slow UIA calls don't
delay the click event past the frame buffer window.
- Emits CTX + ELEM (label/role/value) + CLICK as an atomic batch.
Node.js:
- Parses ELEM events, merges element info into _pendingWindowContext.
- clickMeta.windowContext now carries elementLabel/elementRole/elementValue
in addition to windowTitle/appName.
- buildCaptureTitle priority-5 (element label) now fires from click-watcher
data, giving "Select Oracle | Cloud Applications…" without OCR.
**Fix 2: Wider OCR crop**
ocrAroundClick now uses a full-display-width × 100px horizontal strip at
the click height. The previous 420 px crop cropped through long link text
(e.g. "Oracle | Cloud Applications and Cloud Platform"), causing fragments
to be scored lower than the complete text.
**Fix 3: Search-results window title fallback**
extractSearchQuery now only produces "Search for Oracle" when recentTyped
is non-empty (the user was actually typing a query). For a pure click on
the search-results page (no recent typing), the fallback is "Select a
Oracle result in Chrome" — honest about what we know without implying the
user performed the search in this step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
**AI button: dynamic tooltip hints**
- titleAiBtn and descAiBtn now show "Rewrite with AI" when the field
already has user content, "Generate with AI" when empty.
- updateAiButtonHints() fires on every title/description input event
and whenever syncStepFields() runs to keep hints current.
**Stronger rewrite prompt**
- When the user has typed a draft title or description, the prompt now
shows it explicitly: "User's draft title (rewrite this): '...'"
- Rules changed from "improve its wording" to "Your only job is to
polish its grammar and phrasing. Do NOT replace it with something
different." — prevents the model from ignoring the user's text and
generating fresh content from capture context.
- The suggested-title hint is suppressed when a draft title exists so
the model doesn't silently swap the user's text for the auto-title.
**Title quality: generic window title filter**
- GENERIC_WINDOW_TITLES Set filters "New Tab", "Untitled", "Loading"
etc. from the window-title path so they no longer produce titles
like "Open New Tab in Chrome".
**Title quality: app name stripping for non-browser apps**
- stripBrowserNameSuffix now accepts an optional appName; it strips
the app's display name and process name from the window title suffix
using the same pattern as browser names.
- "Document1.docx - Word" with appName "winword" → "Document1.docx".
- buildCaptureTitle passes metadata.appName into the strip call.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Root cause of all-"Screen capture" titles: collectWindowsWindowContext
called execFileSync('powershell.exe') with a 1200 ms timeout, but
PowerShell cold-start on typical Windows systems takes 1-3 seconds.
Every capture timed out silently, returned empty metadata, and fell
back to "Screen capture".
Fix:
- The click watcher C# process (already running, already compiled)
now emits a CTX event immediately before each CLICK event using
GetForegroundWindow → GetWindowText + QueryFullProcessImageName.
These are synchronous Win32 calls, sub-millisecond, no startup cost.
- CTX payload is base64-encoded to survive the line protocol safely:
CTX <b64title> <b64app> <unixMs>
- processClickWatcherData parses CTX lines and stores the decoded
strings in this._lastWindowContext.
- enqueueClickCapture attaches it as clickMeta.windowContext.
- buildCaptureContext uses it directly (Promise.resolve) when present,
bypassing the PowerShell spawn entirely.
Fallback (manual captures without a session click watcher running):
- collectWindowsWindowContext is now async and uses execFile with a
4 s timeout instead of execFileSync at 1200 ms, so it no longer
blocks the event loop and has room to succeed on slower machines.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
**Keyboard hook (Windows)**
- Extends the existing C# WH_MOUSE_LL process to also install
WH_KEYBOARD_LL alongside it (keyboard hook is optional — failure
does not break mouse capture).
- Emits CHAR <code> <ts> for printable keystrokes, KEY <name> <ts>
for modifier combos (Ctrl+T) and special keys (Backspace, Enter).
**Text accumulation in capture session**
- CaptureService tracks _keyBuffer (typed chars since last step) and
_lastShortcut (last modifier combo) using the new onKeyboardEvent()
method.
- snapshotKeyContext() is called at enqueueClickCapture time so each
step's clickMeta.keyContext carries { recentTyped, recentShortcut }.
- Buffer resets after each snapshot; stale input (>8s gap) is dropped.
**UIAutomation element value**
- collectWindowsWindowContext now reads ValuePattern.Current.Value
from the clicked element — giving us what's actually typed in a
search box or text field without needing the keyboard buffer.
**Smart title generation (core/text-intel.js)**
- Priority chain: keyboard shortcut → element value → typed text
→ OCR → element label → page title → app name.
- SHORTCUT_TITLES maps 50+ common shortcuts (Ctrl+T, Ctrl+S, F5 …)
to natural language descriptions: "Open new tab", "Save", etc.
- qualifyTitleWithApp() appends "in Chrome / VS Code / Terminal / …"
to every title when the app is known: "Click Save in VS Code",
"Search for oracle in Chrome", "Open new tab in Chrome".
- APP_DISPLAY_NAMES covers browsers, editors, terminals, office apps.
Six new unit tests cover shortcuts, typed-text search, element value,
and app-qualified OCR titles. Capture test updated for keyContext.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
The title engine was falling back to "Screen capture" for all browser
captures because it treated the entire browser window title as noise.
Changes:
- stripBrowserNameSuffix: removes "- Google Chrome" / "| Firefox" etc.
from the end of window titles, leaving just the page title.
"oracle - Google Search - Google Chrome" → "oracle - Google Search"
"Oracle | Cloud Applications - Google Chrome" → page title only
- extractSearchQuery: detects "[query] - Google Search" / Bing / etc.
patterns after stripping the browser suffix, and formats the result
as "Search for oracle".
- buildCaptureTitle: uses stripped page title + search detection before
falling through to the "Screen capture" fallback.
- pickBestOcrPhrase: considers the full OCR line (≤80 chars) as a
candidate with a +35 completeness bonus before splitting on | or ·.
This preserves "Oracle | Cloud Applications and Cloud Platform" as a
single phrase instead of breaking it into fragments.
- candidateWords: filters out standalone punctuation tokens (|, ·, •)
so they don't inflate word-count penalties for compound brand names.
- verbForElementRole: hyperlinks and links now produce "Select" instead
of "Click"; search box / search field produces "Search for".
Five new unit tests cover: browser title stripping, search query
extraction, full pipe-separated link text, link and search box verbs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
- Remove the standalone "AI Rewrite" section from the editor panel.
The existing title and description AI buttons already flush the step
first, so they rewrite whatever the user has typed in those fields.
- Never pass a generic fallback title ("Screen capture", "Window
capture", "Region capture", "Capture") as the AI title candidate or
as step content. It is now treated as "(not set — generate a
specific action title)" so the AI always produces something real.
- hasRichCaptureContext now counts any non-trivial app name or window
title as sufficient context, instead of requiring non-browser noise.
- Prompt rules updated: "NEVER output Screen/Window/Region capture",
separate paths for improving a user draft vs generating from context,
and clearer guidance when context is limited (use app/window name).
- isPlaceholderTitle helper guards summarizeStepForAi so a
default-titled step presents itself as empty to the AI.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
- Store captureMetadata (OCR text, window/app/element info) with each
step at capture time so AI always has the original rich context.
- Add buildCaptureContext() to TextIntelService; capture.js uses it
instead of buildCaptureTitle() so both title and metadata come from
one pass.
- generateStepPatch() prefers stored captureMetadata over re-running
OCR, giving the AI the best possible context when the user clicks
an AI button later.
- Add autoDoc setting: when enabled every capture (shoot, region, and
session hotkey/click) is automatically documented by AI. Manual
captures await AI before returning; session captures fire-and-forget
and push a step:updated event so the renderer reloads seamlessly.
- Add ai:rewriteText IPC and rewriteText() method for plain-text
polishing via a separate callOllamaText() that skips JSON mode.
- Add "AI Rewrite" section in the editor right panel: textarea + AI
button that rewrites whatever the user types in place.
- Improve buildAiPrompt() rules: action-focused title instructions,
explicit anti-junk rules (no "Capture the screen / OCR" blocks),
and a context-quality gate that suppresses blocks when context is
thin.
- Add autoDoc checkbox to AI settings dialog.
- Renderer handles step:updated to reload the selected step after
background auto-doc finishes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
createGuide() opened the new guide with plain openGuide(), so no capture
session was armed — the "Start recording" bar never bound to the new guide,
and clicking it did nothing (or resumed a stale prior session). Every other
open path (guide cards, search results, New Capture) arms a paused session;
this aligns createGuide() with them via openGuideAndArmCapture().
- ci.yml: runs the unit test suite (npm test → node --test tests/unit) on
push and PR to main, across ubuntu/windows/macos with Node 20. Electron is
installed normally because the capture unit tests require app/capture.js,
which require()s the electron module at load.
- release.yml: manual workflow_dispatch. Enter a version tag (e.g. v0.1.1);
it builds the Windows portable .exe (npm run package:windows) and the Linux
tarball + .deb (scripts/package-linux.sh), stamps the requested version onto
each artifact, then publishes a GitHub Release at the current commit with
the artifacts attached and auto-generated notes. Supports a prerelease flag.
Follow-up polish after the EcoQoS fix landed and recordings improved:
- Re-apply the EcoQoS opt-out when the stream backend reports it is active.
Chromium spawns/upgrades its GPU and screen-capture utility processes only
once the desktop stream actually starts — after the session-start sweep —
so they could still be born throttled. Hooking the capture:state transition
to 'stream' catches them the moment they appear.
- Raise the warmup cap from 1500ms to 3000ms. The recorder window stays
visible during warmup (the user hasn't started their workflow yet) and the
common path still proceeds the instant the stream is ready, so the extra
headroom only matters when stream startup is slow on battery — where it
buys a real pre-click frame for the very first click instead of a
post-click fresh shot.
Confirmed cause: on battery in a power-saving plan, Windows applies Power
Throttling (EcoQoS) to background work. StepForge records with its window
hidden, so the frame-capture worker renderer (plus the GPU and screen-capture
utility processes feeding it) get CPU-throttled. The throttled worker can't
sample the screen fast enough, so every click finds no fresh pre-click frame
and falls back to a slow post-click fresh shot — producing out-of-order,
dropped steps. It only reproduced on battery; plugged in (where EcoQoS stays
off even in eco mode) it worked. The capture log showed every click detected
but every one reporting "no frame qualified", with a ~4.6s stream startup.
Fixes:
- Chromium switches (disable-background-timer-throttling,
disable-renderer-backgrounding, disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows) so
Chromium stops de-prioritising and timer-throttling the hidden worker.
- New app/win-power.js opts the OS processes out of EcoQoS via
SetProcessInformation(ProcessPowerThrottling, EXECUTION_SPEED off) and
raises them to high priority. Applied to all live Electron processes when a
session starts/resumes, and to the worker renderer the moment it is created
(before it begins streaming). Best-effort, no-op off Windows.
The earlier mouse-hook EcoQoS opt-out already fixed click *detection*; this
fixes the frame-capture side that the same throttling was breaking.
The real cause of "only the first couple of clicks were captured while on
power saving mode": Windows Power Throttling (EcoQoS) CPU-starves background
processes under a power-saving plan. The low-level WH_MOUSE_LL hook lives in
the spawned PowerShell watcher; when its callback is starved past the system
LowLevelHooksTimeout, Windows silently stops delivering mouse events to it —
the process keeps running (so no exit/crash, no fallback to interval capture
fires), it just misses clicks, and those clicks never become steps.
The previous powerSaveBlocker('prevent-app-suspension') only maps to
SetThreadExecutionState, which blocks system sleep but does NOT opt a process
out of EcoQoS, so it couldn't fix this.
Have the watcher process opt itself out of execution-speed throttling via
SetProcessInformation(ProcessPowerThrottling, ...) and raise itself to
HIGH_PRIORITY_CLASS at startup, so the hook callback always runs at full
speed and every click is delivered regardless of the laptop's power mode.
Two changes:
- Hold powerSaveBlocker.start('prevent-app-suspension') for the duration of
each recording session. Windows Power Throttling (EcoQoS) can CPU-starve
the capture-worker renderer mid-session, causing stream frame requests to
time out and degrade to the slower in-process legacy loop. The blocker
signals to the OS that this is an active workload and keeps the stream
worker and main-process event loop running at full speed. Released on
pause and finish.
- Remove maxFrameRate: 30 from the getUserMedia constraint in the capture
worker. The actual sampling rate is driven entirely by the setInterval
timer, so the stream's native frame rate is irrelevant to capture
correctness. Capping at 30 could silently reduce stream delivery on some
drivers when the display itself runs at ≤30 Hz (common in power-saving
mode), leaving the ring buffer with fewer fresh frames at click time.
The placeholders:globals:set IPC handler destructured { values } from
its args, but the renderer sends the placeholders object directly,
so values was always undefined and JSON.stringify(undefined) threw.
Replace the raw accelerator-string text inputs in Settings > Capture
with a polished "click and press a key combination" control that
renders the shortcut as keycap chips with a clear button.
The "Type to search, arrows to move, Enter to open." hint had no
margin, so it sat flush against the search input above while the
results list below it had a 10px margin + 8px padding before its
divider - lopsided spacing. Make .quick-actions a flex column with a
uniform 8px gap so the hint sits evenly between the input and the
results divider.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Previously the "Contents" page just emitted a TOC field whose cached
result was the literal text "Update contents in Word" - so unless a
user manually ran Update Field in Word, the TOC showed nothing useful
(and many viewers never run that update at all).
Now each step heading is wrapped in a bookmark, and the TOC is built
as real TOC1/2/3-styled paragraphs with hyperlinks to those bookmarks
and PAGEREF fields for page numbers, matching the entry list other
exporters already produce via tocEntries(). The whole thing stays
wrapped in the original `TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u` field so Word can still
refresh page numbers, but the document is correct on first open even
without that step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
The export dialog's Export and Preview buttons now disable and show a
spinner with status text while the corresponding async operation is
in flight, so the user knows the (sometimes slow) export is running
and the app isn't stuck.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Tyler
