A bot asked to open a Threads profile clicked an empty strip ten times: it guessed coordinates
from a picture, and the web tools' description told it they didn't work on its own computer.
- marks.rs: the picture a bot gets has every button, link, field and menu item boxed and
numbered (a tiny built-in digit font, pure Rust), with the same numbers in a list. click /
typing / scroll / mouse_move take the number (ref) and land on the control's centre.
- Where the controls come from: macOS AX and Linux AT-SPI through agent-desktop on a person's
computer (desktop::elements); AT-SPI in the bots' own computer (box/a11y, after XBot's
box-a11y), web pages included. On a Mac a control whose spot another app's window covers gets
no number (topmost window at its centre must be the app's; the Dock's invisible full-screen
window doesn't count). open_app waits until the app is really in front.
- No going round in circles: a step that changed nothing says so; the same step (clicks within
16 px) a third time in a turn comes with a warning, from the fourth time it isn't run.
- The box (version 4): one TigerVNC server instead of Xvfb + x11vnc, the AT-SPI bus and registry
at boot, one browser launcher (box/browser, after XBot's box-chrome: same profile and CDP,
renderer accessibility, a launch lock, stale profile locks cleared). One docker exec per look
(list + picture, ~0.4 s). A brain updates an older box by itself when it has been idle a
minute (files and logins stay); a new box is never made from an older image.
- Gone: computer_use_read_app (the list is in every picture), computer_use_mouse_button, the
per-call picture for the phone (it gets a plain one), the stale browser_read note; the prompt
says web work goes through browser_* by number, and never to read browser cookie or history
files.
Tests: marks (numbering, drawing, fingerprints), box_numbers_are_exact on a box from the new
image (a Threads-like page: the icon links get numbers, Profile clicked by number, Chinese typed
into the numbered field, a click on nothing called out), box_screen_is_exact, VNC e2e 11/11 on
TigerVNC, Calculator 7×8=56 by numbers through the signed app on this Mac, remote_e2e 28/28,
153 unit tests; Linux build + 157 tests + x11_live.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The core: the bot works the computer; a person watches it like a colleague, and takes over
when it needs them. VNC is made for that (only what changed, every mouse move and key, touch on
phones), so the pictures sent one by one go, and with them their own input path.
- vnc.rs: a VNC proxy to the box's x11vnc through one docker exec (a Python bridge that ends
with either side). It signs in to the box with the box's own password (its VNC_PASSWORD) and
offers the viewer no password, so the password never leaves the brain. The person's clicks
and keys make the bot's steps wait until 8 s after they stop; text typed in the viewer's box
(any language) is pasted in the box.
- Account server: /screen (the viewer page) and /novnc.js (noVNC 1.6.0, MPL-2.0, bundled);
/relay/vnc/<host> takes the browser's WebSocket (account session, or a 10-minute ticket the
app asks for with POST /relay/screen-ticket; owners and admins) and carries it over that
AnyBot's lasting connection (vopen / vdata / vtext / vclose). Both ends of that connection
wait 2 ms instead of 40 ms to read while things move: a request and its answer took up to
160 ms more than needed.
- Phone page: 看 Bot 的電腦 and 接管 open the viewer page (also on the local network: /api/vnc on
the AnyBot's own phone server). This Mac's own screen moved to the ⋯ menu.
- Mac app: 看畫面 opens the viewer in the browser (a screen of a brain: the brain's computer by
ticket; else this computer's box, noVNC straight from it). The in-app picture viewer, the
live JPEG stream, the person's click/move/scroll/key endpoints and the input shell are gone.
- Opening a Mac app uses LaunchServices (`open -a`): agent-desktop's launch waited on the window
through accessibility and failed without 輔助使用 now and then.
Measured on this Mac (made-up account, local relay + headless brain + the real box): viewer
signed in in 0.4–0.7 s, a request and its answer through relay + brain + box 25–58 ms median;
headless Chrome shows the desktop live in /screen. remote_e2e 28/28 ×2, 149 unit tests, relay 11.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Acting by an app's number (read_app's e7) is now a real click at that control's spot, the
same path as screenshot coordinates. agent-desktop only reads; its own actions (a second set
with its own key names and failures: no typing in terminals, "/" and "`" failing off the main
thread) are gone, with computer_use_select, background clicks and press_key's app.
- Every action comes back with the screen after it (or, with no picture allowed, the front
app's numbered controls), so the bot no longer spends a step on a screenshot to check.
- Coordinates map without remembering a screenshot: the picture's size depends only on the
screen. The phone's taps go straight to the screen as the person's, in the pixels of the
picture it was sent; they used to borrow the bot's last screenshot scale and landed 1.25x off
on the bots' computer, or failed with "screenshot first".
- Mac typing pastes (⌘V, clipboard put back): with 注音 on, text sent as key events vanished
while return arrived, so commands typed into a terminal ran empty. Bare printing keys
("slash", "r") are typed the same way; keys like "slash" and "grave" have names.
- The bots' Docker computer: one docker exec per step (action, settle, picture), never
`mousemove --sync` (it waits forever when the pointer is already there: a second click on
the same spot hung two minutes), open_app (chromium = the browser browser_* drive, xterm).
Tests: box_screen_is_exact (real Docker: bot and phone coordinates exact, same spot twice in
under 2 s, ASCII + Chinese + named key typed), Calculator by numbers and Terminal typing under
注音 through the signed app, remote_e2e 28/28, Linux build + 151 tests + x11_live.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Read apps as numbered element lists (computer_use_read_app), act by ref
(click/typing/select/scroll/press_key/open_app) via agent-desktop v1.1.0.
Verified on macOS (Calculator, Finder) and headless Linux (Xvfb+openbox+AT-SPI).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Uirha3oEtWeHh58zA7ErHa
王性驊