Agent skill · operations · nousresearch
computer-use
Drive the desktop background-first; escalate on signal.
Why this skill is useful
Adds a comprehensive set of executable automation commands for desktop interaction that are not commonly available in standard libraries.
What it needs
Requires cua-driver installed locally. About 10k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 226,679 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Computer Use (universal, any-model, cross-platform) You have a computeruse tool that drives the user's desktop in the background — your actions do NOT move the user's cursor, steal keyboard focus, or switch virtual desktops / Spaces. The user can keep typing in their editor while you click around in a browser in another window. This is the opposite of pyautogui-style automation. Everything here works with any tool-capable model — Claude, GPT, Gemini, or an open model on a local OpenAI-compatible endpoint. There is no Anthropic-native schema to learn. Hermes drives cua-driver under the hood. This skill teaches the Hermes computeruse action vocabulary, which is NOT the driver's raw MCP vocabulary. Call the actions documented below and never the driver's tools by name: capture is a Hermes action that maps to the driver's getwindowstate; element=N is a Hermes argument that the wrapper translates into the driver's elementtoken handle. If you see a driver-side error mentioning snapshotid, elementtoken, or "no reviewed risk classification", you (or a stale description) called the raw driver vocabulary — go back to the actions below. The canonical workflow Step 1 — Capture first. Almost every task starts with: Returns a screenshot plus an indexed element list like: The #N index is the ONLY element handle you use. Behind it the wrapper keeps this snapshot's opaque per-element token and sends it with every element=N action, so a click on an index from a superseded snapshot is refused explicitly (stale) instead of landing on the wrong control. Re-capture after anything that changes the screen; indices do not survive it. The role names match the host platform's accessibility framework (AXButton on macOS, Button on Windows UIA, push button on Linux AT-SPI) — treat them as labels, not as strict types. Step 2 — Click by element index. This is the single most important habit: Much more reliable than pixel coordinates for every model. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills nousresearch/computer-use