HN Explorer

Show HN: Tasker – An open-source desktop agent for browser and OS automation (automatewithtasker.com)

33 points by schnetzlerjoe ↗ HN
Hi HN

I recently got married, promptly had a bit of a meltdown, and decided to lock myself in a room and build for a while.

At the same time, I was trying to outbound sell for my startup and kept running into the same problem: I wanted an automation tool that could actually use my computer like a person. Click through UIs, copy/paste between apps, handle messy workflows — not just APIs and webhooks.

I couldn’t find anything that felt: - consumer-friendly (non-technical) - local-first - flexible enough for real-world, UI-driven tasks

So I challenged myself to see how far I could get building an open-source, desktop automation app powered by AI. That’s Tasker.

I’ve been using it daily for ~2–3 weeks for sales workflows, and my father has been using it to help generate estimates for his HVAC business. It’s still early (still needs to expand to general OS), but it’s already replaced a lot of manual work for us in browser.

One thing that’s become very clear: a cloud/deployable version that can run on cron or be triggered via HTTP would unlock a lot of use cases. I’m not totally sure where this goes next, but I wanted to share it early and get feedback.

Would love thoughts on: - What workflows you’d actually trust something like this with - Desktop vs cloud tradeoffs - Where this breaks down in practice - Whether this feels useful or just scary

Repo and docs are linked on the site.

12 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 34.3 ms ] thread
yodon
HN hug of death? Can't open the site
Tade0
Not to be confused with Tasker for Android:

https://tasker.joaoapps.com/index.html

dizhn
Super unnecessary confusion generating stuff from OP's side. He is having fun with people who think it's not the best idea too. Nobody is thinking of the potential confused user. It's a shit name to begin with, now we have two of them.

> I wanna get a job naming kitchen appliances. Seems like the easiest job ever. You know, refrigerator, toaster, blender... You just say what the thing does and then you add '-er'. Kitchen Appliance Naming Institute. "What's this do?" "It keeps shit fresh." "Well, that's a 'fresher'. I'm going on break."

Mitch Hedberg

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
1shooner
>Your data never leaves your computer. Tasker runs entirely on your machine for maximum privacy.

Am I misreading your docs that Tasker actually does not support running local, and in fact requires using either a Google, Anthropic, or OpenAI service?

jutter
How on earth did you manage to get this far before learning of the Android app by the same name? You can't call this Tasker.

Are you willing to expand more on the meltdown? Coming to terms with being a grown up? Did your marriage survive?

IntelliAvatar
This looks great.

One thing I’ve been bitten by with desktop agents is execution-time safety: the plan is correct, but a single malformed path or OS call causes real damage.

Do you enforce any guardrails at the tool boundary (e.g. path sandboxing, network allowlists, dry-run / replay)?

Curious how you’re thinking about this.

conception
I want this but it runs in its own session- like screen or terminal server- so i can keep using the computer and just check in on the automation from time to time.
sbondaryev
Nice idea - unfortunately I didn't manage to get it running on my MacBook Pro (Late 2013).

I'm on Big Sur 11.7.10, which I know is pretty old at this point. The app launches, but it only shows an empty window.

I was also a bit concerned about privacy while running it :)

donclark
I tried to create a workflow and it does not seem to record specific tasks. It did not record me going to a specific website, clicking on an area of text, copying of text. How can I get this to work? How do I teach or correct it? THx