Howdy,

So I’m guessing you’ve heard the story by now about how people are using REA (Reverse Engineer Anything) to create clones of well-known software.

Recently, a very annoyed ex-Adobe customer used an AI model to single-handedly generate free open-source clones of the entire Adobe Creative Suite (which costs $1,259.88 a year to subscribe to).

What’s crazy is you don’t even need to be a programmer or have the source code.

Merely providing the exe to AI and using the REA git repository will give you what you need (oh, and access to a lot of AI tokens).

But is this Ethical❓

I watched two very interesting videos on the topic.

This one says it’s “stealing” and the other says it’s fair game.

Both videos are fairly long so I fed them to AI and had AI “steal” their ideas and create this video doing a pro/con debate.

(I’m guessing you can tell where I fall on the topic)

I did do an experiment with REA to clone Outlook but I don’t plan to share it.

What do you think❓

Is it theft or just the next step of having amazing tools❓

Now on with the show…

Getting your AI to take actions

AI models can pass engineering exams in seconds, but ask one to update a Salesforce record and it falls flat on its face.

It turns out the problem isn’t intelligence, it’s plumbing.

In this video I compare three platforms that handle that plumbing for you, so your agent can actually DO things instead of just talking about them.

Crossing the Gap From Chatbot to Agent

This AI Tool Instantly Removes Silence From Any Video

Six months ago, a few of us burned hours trying to fix a timing bug in my video tool. Eventually I gave up and shelved it.

Last week I asked Fable 5 to take a look, and it fixed the bug in under 15 minutes. Now that tool cuts the dead air out of my videos. One 35-minute video lost over 6 minutes, and you can’t even see the cuts.  Check it out in this video.

AI Video Tool Cuts 35 Min Clip by 6 Minutes | Hero Extract

Picking the right AI Model

During a Hero call, Isaias discussed how he picks which model to use depending on his goals.

It’s getting more and more difficult to keep track of which model you should use.  Hopefully AI companies will start to use tools like JEV to automatically switch for you.

Check it out in this video.

Claude Opus for Planning Sonnet for Coding | Hero Extract

Using our Crazy Fast AHK Explorer

A few weeks back in this video we showed off our AHK File Explorer which now includes the XP Files search tool.

If you’re tired of how slow Windows Explorer is, you should check out our AHK File Explorer.

Handling 20,000 Items in AutoHotkey List View | Hero Extract

Improving People’s Lives: Story #119

Last week I mentioned I was helping my buddy Joey reduce the size of the images in his Google Photos account.   He had 103,437 photos❗

I used Local AI to determine how many people were in each photo.  If there were more than 4, then I used Jev to see if it was a “group photo”.  If it was, then I did not compress the photo.  I compressed all the other photos (most pics went from ~7 megs to 300KB).

He went from over 4 Terabytes down to 13 Gigabytes.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

In this case it is worth over 100 thousand photos!

Currently I’m processing a lot of his videos thru Effortless Video Reducer.

I’ll report back on that when I compress the 20,000+ videos …

What we’re reading

• Windows 11 gets a nice overhaul
• These apps & tools are wearing out your SSD without telling you
• How to Remove Hyperlinks in Microsoft Excel

AI News that you Need to Know

• Claude Duet (Anthropic Agent). Join the waitlist here
• DeepSeek updates V4.1-Flash and opens its search API to developers
• Meta releases Muse Spark Open
• Ollama 0.40.4 lets you run decision models from the command line

⚡️Productivity tips:  Plan For Failure

Before starting a project, imagine that it has failed .

Work backward to identify what probably went wrong, then address those risks before they happen.

A spot of Humor:  Things heat up…

When the studio got too hot with Irina Shayk #shorts

What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #153

This week I got a local transcription tool running on Microsoft Foundry Local so my audio never leaves my PC, and I added a relaunch button to my AddToStartUp tool so I can easily relaunch any of my killed scripts without rebooting.

I also built an AI video editor that pulls clips from a prompt, strips filler words, and even clones my voice, plus a Transcriber that now writes the title, tags, and thumbnail and uploads straight to YouTube.

In this week’s video I walk you through all of it, including a copy-paste monitor that spots automation opportunities and an email triage tool that scores my inbox for me.

What we Automated this week #153

Clients say…

This has the potential to save more time than anything we’ve done so far — Michael N. (Radiologist)

AHK Hero

Consider joining the Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 619 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to Hero members❗

During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:

• Help Hero Members with their Questions & Code

• Using Claude to publish scripts on the-Automator
• Alexa ChatGPT skill.   Alexa to computer via Tailscale
• Automating the Reduction of Joey’s 4 TB of photos to 13 GB

• AHK Tools
  • Publish-Assistant – Publish YouTube videos
  • AI editor and Davinci Resolve to edit videos
  • Add to Startup Added Restart all
  • File Extension Associator
  • NextSetup
  • Icon Animate (and GUI Animations)
  • Watching Copy/Paste (for Automation needs)
  • Reverse Engineer Anything
    • TapeCalc 2
    • ViewSav 2
  • GrokBotNoClose
  • Social Media Blocker
  • Personal Info Scrubber
  • Identifying processes that Need Automation (Clipboard tracker)
  • RTF and md to HTML
• Rust Tools
  • FilmCraft
  • Icon Grabber
  • Image Resizer
  • Image Converter

️ Quotable quotes

• Just do it. The meek may inherit the earth, but only after the bold are through with it — John Carlton
• Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they’re fools, and fools who think they are wise — Socrates
• The written word is the strongest source of power in the entire universe — Gary Halbert

⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩

Do you know someone that would benefit from learning useful automation tips like the gems in today’s issue?  Take a second and forward this newsletter and bask in the glow of their undying gratitude.  Was this email forwarded to you?

Sign up for this Newsletter here.  We never share your email with anyone.  Ever!

the-Automator  Dedicated to Multiplying your Income

Joe, Isaias, Irfan and staff

P.S. So what do you think❓   Is using AI with REA ethical❓

And how will software companies compete when it is so easy to “clone” their software❓