Home Automation Archive by category "AutoHotKey" (Page 16)

Category: AutoHotKey

AutoHotkey (AHK) is a free, open-source macro-creation and automation software for Windows that allows users to automate repetitive tasks. It is driven by a scripting language that was initially aimed at providing keyboard shortcuts, otherwise known as hotkeys, that over time evolved into a full-fledged scripting language.

I’m getting High with a little help from my friends 👀 -AHK News 2026-07-16

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy,

I’ve heard how runners get an endorphin rush while running (if this was not a thing I don’t think there would be many people that actually ran…)

But I’ve come to realize that, when I’m talking with friends about how we use AI, I’m getting quite “high” with our new capabilities.

We can now create virtually anything we want in a few hours.

This has led to a drastic shift in how we use AutoHotkey.

We used to help clients automate their programs but now we have shifted to

why not just create the program they want❓

It’s amazing how often we can create a custom tool to do just what they want (which they have full control over) instead of patching the old software.

How about you❓  Are you getting your “fix” in?  

If not, the first three of you can have a free week of Claude’s Max plan by clicking here

Just be warned.  Once you get used to the bandwidth, it will be very hard to go back!

Now on with the show…

Learn how to Master VSCode Make the switch to v2 Intro to AutoHotkey Intermediate AutoHotkey Intermediate ObjectsGUIs are Easy w/AutoHotkey Access all our Courses; Quit when you want

exhausted

Move Missing Program to Mouse

Do you ever wonder where your program went❓  

Our Bring Window to Mouse script makes it easy to figure that out.  Simply hit your hotkey, select the window you want and WHAM there it is!

This is especially helpful when you’re remoting in to computers.

Check out how simple it works in this video

How to easily Move any Window to your Mouse Location
How to easily Move any Window to your Mouse Location

Every Built-in AutoHotkey Variable

There are over 100 built-in AutoHotkey variables❗ 

In this article I broke them into the following 6 groups and walk you through each one

  1. Script & Environment (who am I, where am I running?)
  2. Date & Time (the clock, sliced every way you’d want)
  3. System & User Folders (the machine and the person using it)
  4. Input, Send & Coordinate Settings (how AHK types and clicks)
  5. Hotkeys & the Running Script (what just fired, and idle time)
  6. Loops, Windows & Text Matching (the workhorse variables)

There are so many I built a simple script to search for them and see their current values. 

Check it out in this video

How to Search and Examining Built-in Variables in AutoHotkey
How to Search and Examining Built-in Variables in AutoHotkey

Removing Dead Air

I was looking around our AI folder and saw a name I didn’t recognize; “Clear cut”.

When I opened the folder & script it came back to me.   

Around 6 months ago we realized, by using Assembly AI for transcriptions we can get the time of each spoken word.   This means we can create a tool to remove “ums”, “uhs”, swear words, etc.   (something only available in expensive editors, usually with a subscription).

And, since FFMPEG can detect “silence” we can also let people choose if they want to remove periods where there’s either no sound or just background music.

The problem was, the script was much more complicated than we anticipated.  And, while I knew I would eventually solve it, we had other work to do so I put it on the “back burner” (and eventually forgot about it.)

I love finding projects like this because now with Fable 5, I have access to (what feels like) super intelligence!

So I fed it to Fable 5 and asked it to find our problems.   6 minutes later I had a working script!

Grab the Noise Removal tool, or check it out in this video.

New AI Tool Removes Dead Air and Ums in Recordings- No Subscription!

New AI Tool Removes Dead Air and Ums in Recordings- No Subscription!

Improving People’s Lives: Story #106

Last week I sat with a client and helped him start the transition from using AI from a browser to using it in an IDE/Local app (which has access to his files.) 

He got inspired to make the switch after watching this video where I explained using AI I got two days worth of work done in 15 minutes!

How AI Built a Page Listing All My AI Tools
How AI Built a Page Listing All My AI Tools

📚 What we’re reading

🤖 AI News that you Need to Know

⚡️Productivity tips:  the “One Thing” Method

Every morning, identify THE ONE task that would make today successful.

Not 10 tasks. ONE.

Everything else is bonus❗

🤣 A spot of Humor: Treat yourself to a break with Man’s best friend

The Funniest Dog Moments 🐶🤣 Best Funny Animal Videos

The Funniest Dog Moments 🐶🤣 Best Funny Animal Videos

What we 🅰utomated this week with AutoHotkey #140

This week I went on a tear building custom AI and AutoHotkey tools, from a revamped Add to startup (video) that lets me enable, disable, and selectively launch scripts, to benchmarks pitting Grok, Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini against each other on real AutoHotkey V2 code (Grok 4.3 crushed it on clean code at a fraction of the cost).

I also show off cheap high-quality Noise removal, semantic file search, a smart renamer, phone integration that mirrors my apps over Cloudflare, and QR tools that spit out payment and contact codes on the fly.

In this week’s video I walk you through all of them and how I keep the AI costs surprisingly low.

140 What we Automated with AI and AHK #140
140 What we Automated with AI and AHK #140

Clients say…

THANK YOU, YOU SAVED MY LIFEEEEEEEEEEEEEE — @sillywilly-102

Cartoon superhero mascot in green costume beside the bold text AHK Hero on a yellow background AHK Hero 🦸

Consider joining the 🦸Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.

Currently we have over 590 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to Hero members❗

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

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and 3 hours a week where we help people with their automation issues (the Saturday calls are geared towards people new to Automation with AI)

🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

  • In the era of automation, embracing programming isn’t just a skill; it’s a necessity for staying relevant in the workforce — Tim Cook
  • Learn a HotKey a day to keep inefficiency away! — Joe Glines
  • If you’re not troubled over some of the things you’re saying no to, you need to say no MORE often! — Joe Glines

AHK Newsletter⏩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. the intro was a bit over the top but it is pretty accurate of how I spend my days. 

It’s so crazy how efficient AI is making us! 

Join the Hero club so you can get inspired on new ways to use AI and AutoHotkey!

 

50 AI Tools That Save Me Hours Every Week

From Joe’s workshop

Every AI tool I’ve built (so far) 🤖

Here’s the deal. Over the last couple of years I got a little obsessed. Every time I caught myself doing something repetitive with AI (transcribing a video, cleaning up a prompt, pulling text off my screen) I’d stop and think, “Why am I doing this by hand?”

So I’d build a tool. Then another. Then another. This page is the whole pile, organized so you can actually find what you need.

Most of these run right on your Windows machine with AutoHotkey. A few use the cloud, a few run AI locally so nothing leaves your computer. The ones with a link (you’ll see a little ↗ next to the name) are ones you can grab for yourself. The rest are experiments, some half-baked, some just for me. That’s the fun of it. Time is the one thing you can’t buy more of, and every one of these gives a little of it back.

What AI tools can you build with AutoHotkey?

Way more than you’d think! This page lists 50 I’ve built: transcription (Parakeet, Transcriber), text to speech and voice cloning, writing helpers (ScoreMyCopy, AI Prompt Assistant), smart file renaming and search, OCR, background removal, video subtitles, and tools that help write AutoHotkey itself (AI Error Assist, V1 to V2 Converter).

Do these AI tools run locally?

Some do. They all run on your Windows PC with AutoHotkey, but the AI part varies. A few send work to the cloud, and a few run the AI locally (like Parakeet and Transcriber (Local LLM)), so nothing ever leaves your computer. Look for the ↗ next to a name: those are the ones you can download.

How AI Built a Page Listing All My AI Tools


How AI Built a Page Listing All My AI Tools

 

Have a look around. If one of these solves a problem you deal with every day, that’s a win. 🚀

50
Tools
9
Categories
21
For sale

🎙️ Turning talk into text

I talk a LOT faster than I type. These take audio and video and hand you clean text, from live dictation to “transcribe this whole file and summarize it for me.”

AI Audio Transcribe ↗

Record on the fly or drop in a file, and it turns your speech into text with Whisper. Simple, fast, and it lives in your tray ready to go.

AI Audio Transcribe (WinRT) ↗

Same idea, but it grabs the audio straight from Windows instead of FFmpeg. One less moving part on your machine.

StreamSpeechToText ↗

Real-time dictation that types the words right where your cursor is as you speak. I run it with a foot pedal, which honestly feels like a superpower.

Transcribe and Summarize ↗

Point it at a recording and you get the transcript AND a summary. Right-click a file and go. Great for long meetings you’d rather not sit through twice.

Transcribe with OpenRouter

A little one-shot experiment: pick an audio file, send it through OpenRouter’s audio model, and copy back the text. Bare-bones on purpose.

Transcriber ↗

My workhorse. Transcribes, summarizes, and even whips up a YouTube thumbnail from your media. Right-click and Send-To make it effortless.

Transcriber (Local LLM) ↗

Same tool, but the summarizing happens on a local model. Nothing leaves your machine, and you’re not paying per call.

Parakeet

Drag a video onto it and it spits out subtitles right next to the file, all running locally on your GPU. No cloud, no waiting.

Transcribe Media (frozen build)

The rock-solid “known good” version of my full transcribe app, with speaker labels and filters. When I want something that just works, this is it.

Talk to AI ↗

Ask a question out loud and get an answer back from ChatGPT or Claude. It’s the closest thing to just having the AI in the room with you.

🔊 Making the computer talk back

Sometimes reading is slower than listening. These read text out loud, from plain clean voices to a clone of a real one with actual emotion.

Text to Speech ↗

Highlight text, hit a hotkey, and it reads it aloud with a natural AI voice. You can save the audio too. I use it to catch clunky writing by ear.

AI Clone Speak

Reads your selected text in a cloned voice through ElevenLabs. One hotkey, and there it is.

AI Clone Speak with Inflection ↗

The fun one. Drop tags like [excited] or [whispers] right into your text and the cloned voice actually acts it out. Way more human than flat narration.

✍️ Better writing, faster

Writing eats time. These help me score copy, match a client’s voice, and sharpen prompts before I send them.

ScoreMyCopy

Feed it a headline or product name and it grades it against the character limits and marketing basics: who’s it for, what’s the offer, where’s the reader in their journey. Takes the guesswork out.

Borrowing Writing Style

Keeps a profile of how each client writes so the AI can sound like them, not like a robot. Handy when you juggle a lot of voices.

AI Prompt Assistant ↗

Helps you build and polish a prompt, then fires it off to your AI of choice without leaving what you’re doing.

🗂️ Finding and fixing files

Point AI at a folder and just tell it what you want. Rename a mess of files, filter down to what matters, or search by meaning instead of exact words.

SmartFileRenamer

Describe how you want a folder of files named and the AI proposes the whole batch. No more renaming 200 files by hand. 😊

SmartFileSearch

Tell it what you’re after in plain English and it hands back only the files that match. Like having someone dig through the folder for you.

SearchOnConcept ↗

Drop in your docs, audio, and video, then ask a question. It finds the right file AND the exact page or timestamp where the answer lives. This one still amazes me.

Embeddings Doc Search

Semantic search over the AutoHotkey help docs. Type a concept, get the right help pages, even when you don’t know the exact command name.

🖼️ Working with images and video

Pixels in, results out: read text off the screen, make icons, strip backgrounds, chop up videos, burn in subtitles, and even generate animations.

AI OCR ↗

Drag a box around anything on your screen and it pulls the text out with AI vision, and it’ll translate it too. Text trapped in an image is one of my pet peeves, so this one gets used a lot.

IconCreator ↗

Type what you want, and it generates an image and saves it as a proper multi-size .ico. Every one of my tools needs an icon, so I built the tool that makes them. 😃

RemoveBackground

Drop an image, get it back with the background gone. Runs locally, so no API key and no upload. Fast and free.

Segmenter ↗

Breaks a video into logical chapters for you. Great for turning one long recording into bite-sized pieces.

Translate & Subtitle Video ↗

Generates translated subtitles and burns them right into the video. Reach a whole new audience without touching a video editor.

RemotionWrapper

Describe an animation in plain English (or pick a template) and it builds and renders the video for you. Motion graphics without the headache.

🛠️ Tools for building tools

A lot of what I do is AutoHotkey, so I built AI helpers for AHK itself: fixing errors, converting between versions, and inspecting what’s on screen.

AI Error Assist ↗

Your script throws an error, and instead of googling it, this sends the error and the code to an AI and hands you back a fix. Saves so much frustration.

AI Chat ↗

The same Error Assist idea, licensed and ready to hand out. Send an error or a chunk of code and get help back.

ErrorCapture ↗

Sits quietly in the background and catches your AHK errors the moment they happen, then logs them. Set it and forget it.

V1 to V2 Converter

Turns old AutoHotkey v1 code into v2. Meant to live inside your editor so upgrading old scripts stops being a chore.

V2 to V1 Converter

Goes the other way and flags anything tricky, with an optional AI pass to help with the parts that don’t map cleanly.

UIA Tree Inspector

Point at any element on screen and browse its accessibility tree, with an AI sidebar to help you write the automation. If you’ve ever fought with UIA, you know why this exists.

AutoHotkey Chat Rules

A quick hotstring that pastes my coding-style rules into an AI chat, so whatever it writes actually follows my conventions.

Figma (experiment)

An early design experiment. Not finished, but I keep it around because half of learning is the stuff that didn’t pan out.

⚡ Getting more out of the models

Working with the AI itself: comparing models, sharpening prompts, sorting out API keys, and running things right in the browser.

ModelBenchmark

Lists every OpenRouter model with its cost and context size, then runs a benchmark so you can see which one actually performs. Don’t guess which model to use. Measure. 😊

PromptImprover

Hit a hotkey and it rewrites your rough prompt into a much better one. A tiny bit of polish makes a HUGE difference in what you get back.

PromptStarting

Type your thought, and it opens a fresh Claude chat with a “keep it short and accurate” prefix already in place. Removes the friction of starting.

AI Hotkeys

AI-powered lookup and search shortcuts wrapped into one build. Answers a keystroke away.

ApiKeyIdentifier

Paste in a mystery API key and it tells you which service it belongs to. A small thing, but it’s saved me plenty of head-scratching.

GeminiNano

A web page that generates text with Chrome’s built-in on-device model. No server, no API key, no cost. The future is getting weird in a good way. 🤖

🤖 Assistants and automation

The bigger builds: voice interpreters, a live helper for sales calls, and command-line harnesses that drive other apps for you.

AI Interpreter

Speak, and it transcribes, runs your words through the AI, and speaks the answer back. Three models working together so you can just talk.

HeroCallAssistant

Listens to a live call and quietly surfaces helpful suggestions in real time, with you in the loop to approve them. Like a smart co-pilot on the phone.

AHK CLI (MCP)

A command-line “ahk” that lets AI validate, run, find, kill, and inspect scripts. This is how I let AI actually drive my AutoHotkey work.

CLI-Anything

A shared skin that gives all my little app-driving harnesses (GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, Audacity) the same clean, colorful terminal feel.

Claude Skills Viewer ↗

A clean dark viewer for browsing all the Claude Code skills you’ve got installed. Handy once your collection grows.

📚 Notebooks and data

Front-ends over the stuff I keep coming back to: research notebooks, contacts, and my to-do list.

NotebookLM Desktop

A desktop front-end for Google’s NotebookLM: create notebooks, add sources, and grab the results without living in the browser.

CardSnap

Pulls all my contacts down to a local database and a simple spreadsheet, so I can text and email people in bulk right from the PC.

VoiceToDo

A simple desktop client for my to-do list that syncs with the phone app. Topics on the left, tasks on the right, check them off as you go.

That’s the whole workshop. Some of these took an afternoon, some took weeks, and a few started as “this’ll never work” and turned into things I use every single day.

One thing I’ve learned: you don’t need a giant plan to start automating. Pick the one repetitive task that annoys you most, and take a swing at it. Worst case, you learn something. Best case, you never do it by hand again. 🚀

Want to learn to build stuff like this yourself? Come check out the courses over at the-Automator.com/Discover. They come with a 200% money-back guarantee, so you’ve got nothing to lose. 😊

Happy automating,
Joe Glines

Teaching Claude to work YOUR way- Creating Claude Skills

Teaching Claude to Work YOUR Way: Creating Claude Skills

I was messing around with Claude the other day, and I caught myself typing the same instructions for the third time that week.

“Use AutoHotkey v2, not v1. Put the functions at the end. Include the header lines. Dark theme the GUI.”

Every. Single. Time.

And it hit me: why am I re-explaining all this? Claude is smart, but it doesn’t magically know how I like things done. It’s like hiring a brilliant new assistant who’s never met you. Talented, sure, but you still have to show them the ropes.

That’s exactly what Skills solve. And if you’re new to AI and new to Claude Code, this is one of those things that clicks and suddenly makes the whole tool 10x more useful.

Let me walk you through it.

What is a Claude Skill?

Think of a Skill as a little instruction packet you hand to Claude: your rules, your preferences and a few reference files, written once so Claude follows them every time. No more re-explaining “use v2, put functions at the end” in every chat.

Out of the box, Claude knows a LOT. But it doesn’t know your quirks, your rules, your preferred way of doing things. A Skill fills in that gap. It augments the model’s knowledge with YOUR knowledge.

Here’s the key idea: the model is the raw brainpower. The Skill is the specialized playbook. You’re not making Claude smarter in general, you’re making it smarter about your stuff.

Want every AutoHotkey script to include your header lines and put functions at the end? Write it once into a Skill. Now Claude does it automatically, forever, without you nagging.

The cool thing is you stop repeating yourself and you start getting consistent results. That’s the whole game.

How do you create a Claude Skill?

Just ask Claude. Here’s the part people miss: Claude has a built-in Skill Creator skill.

You don’t need to learn some scary format or hand-write config files. You literally ask Claude to help you make a Skill, and it walks you through it. Tell it what you want the Skill to do, and it scaffolds the thing for you.

It’s a Skill that makes Skills. 🤖

So the barrier to entry is basically zero. If you can describe what you want in plain English, you can make a Skill.

Why doesn’t Claude use my Skill?

Nine times out of ten, it’s the description. This trips up a lot of beginners, so pay attention.

Claude decides which Skill to use based on a waterfall load. Picture your Skills lined up, each with a short description. When you ask Claude to do something, it reads down that list of descriptions and picks the one that matches.

That means your description is everything.

If your description is vague, Claude won’t know when to grab the Skill, and it just sits there unused. Ever hired someone, given them a tool, and they never touch it because they didn’t realize it applied? Same problem.

So spend real time on the description. Load it up with the trigger words and phrases you’d actually say. If you want a Skill to fire whenever you mention “build a form” or “add a settings window,” put those exact phrases in the description.

A great Skill with a bad description is a Skill that never runs. Optimize the description. It matters more than you’d think.

How do you know your Claude Skill actually works?

This is where Tests and Evals come in. Don’t let the fancy words scare you, they’re simple.

Tests = the examples you throw at it

A Test is just a realistic request a user might make.

“Here are 5 example prompts someone might send this Skill.”

You run Claude-with-the-Skill against each one and look at what comes out. That’s it. This is the eyeball test. You read the output and go “yep, that’s what I wanted” or “nope, that’s wrong, fix it.”

Tests give you the examples to run.

Evals = the grading rubric

Now, eyeballing works for a while, but it’s slow and it’s a vibe check. Evals make it a number.

An Eval is a checkable pass/fail statement about the output. Things like:

  • “The output is valid AutoHotkey v2.”
  • “It includes the required header lines.”
  • “The functions are at the end of the file.”

Instead of squinting at each result, you write these assertions and the outputs get scored automatically. You get a score instead of a feeling.

Evals give you the rubric to judge by.

Put them together and you can actually improve

Here’s the loop, and it’s beautiful:

  1. Run your Tests (the examples)
  2. Check the Evals (the rubric)
  3. See what failed
  4. Tweak the Skill
  5. Run it again

Now you’re not guessing whether your Skill got better. You’ve got a score that says so. This is how you go from “eh, seems okay” to “this Skill nails it every time.” ⚡

The Trick That Almost Nobody Uses

Here’s my favorite tip, and it costs you nothing.

After you finish a session with Claude, if something felt clunky, if you had to correct it a bunch or manually fix stuff it should’ve gotten right, just ASK Claude about it.

Something like:

“Given our last conversation and the changes we had to make, what changes should we make to our Skill to avoid them in the future?”

Claude will look back at where things went sideways and tell you exactly what to add to the Skill so it doesn’t happen again.

Think about that. Your Skill gets better every time you use it, because you’re feeding real friction back into it. That’s compounding. One thing I’ve learned: the tools that improve themselves are the ones worth building.

Oh, And You Can Just TALK To It

One more thing, because I don’t want you sitting there typing paragraphs like it’s 1998.

Hit the microphone button and literally have a conversation with Claude.

I do this constantly. I’ll be describing a Skill, thinking out loud, rambling about what I want it to do, and Claude just goes with it. It feels less like operating software and more like talking to a coworker who happens to be really good at their job.

If you’re new to this, try it. Talking is faster than typing, and it lowers the barrier to actually experimenting. 😊

The Bottom Line

Skills turn Claude from a generic assistant into YOUR assistant.

  • They augment the model with your rules and knowledge.
  • The built-in Skill Creator makes building them easy.
  • Tests give you examples, Evals give you a rubric, and together they let you actually improve.
  • Your description decides whether the Skill ever gets used, so make it good.
  • And when something goes wrong, just ask Claude how to fix the Skill.

You don’t have to get it perfect on day one. Remember: life is an experiment. Try one small Skill, test it, tweak it, and watch how much time you get back.

Now go build something. 🚀