What problem does it solve?
Controlling native Windows desktop applications and system settings from an AI assistant is difficult when no direct CLI or API exists, and naive approaches like screen coordinates or blind keystrokes are fragile and error-prone.
Core Features & Use Cases
- App Discovery and Launching: Find Start menu apps with Get-StartApps, inspect running desktop apps by process and window title, and launch apps or Windows Settings pages via URI schemes like ms-settings:.
- Office COM Automation: Control scriptable Microsoft Office apps such as Excel through documented COM APIs, with strict cleanup patterns that release COM objects and never save or overwrite existing documents.
- UI Automation Inspection: Load the built-in UI Automation assemblies to enumerate windows and controls by process ID, automation ID, or control type, then invoke supported patterns like InvokePattern or ValuePattern.
- Use Case: Ask the assistant to open the microphone privacy settings page, or to inspect the buttons of a running desktop app and click a specific control through UI Automation instead of guessing screen coordinates.
Quick Start
Use the windows-automation skill to open the Windows microphone privacy settings page and list the currently running desktop apps with their window titles.
