My ⛓️🪚Rocks❗ News:2026-09-10

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

Last week I noticed I had a branch down in front of my shed. 

Yesterday I towed it over near the burn pile and got out one of my favorite (albeit super dangerous) automation tools:  my Chainsaw❗ ⛓️💥

Chainsaw aftermath

In a matter of a few minutes I had the limb cut up into dozens of pieces to easily fit in my burn barrel.

It got me thinking about how long something like that would have taken me if I didn’t have the chainsaw.  

Just like how long much of what I do on a daily basis would take me if I hadn’t automated them!

How about you❓    What tool have you created that saves you so much time that you would cry if you could no longer use it❓

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

selfimprovement


Are you 🔥Burning through your AI Tokens❓
A lot of us these days are feeling like drunken sailors, getting Astra, Fable 5, etc. to fulfill our wildest scripting desires.

I’m constantly watching my “gas gauge” go down as Claude burns through my tokens faster than Jeff Spicoli would a bag of weed.

If you’re experiencing token anxiety you should check out this video❗

Cut Context Costs 99% Using Local AI Memory 💰
Cut Context Costs 99% Using Local AI Memory 💰


Dude, Where’s my car❓

Are you like everyone else and at times struggle to remember where you parked❓

Google Maps has a built-in way to save your parking space but it is way too complicated to do when you arrive at your destination and want to get moving.

So I asked Claude to build a simple PWA leveraging my phone and Google Maps.

Now I can basically hit a button to mark my position and share it with others.  You can get a quick look at PinMySpot in this video.

AI Built Location Saving PWA on Phone | Hero Extract
AI Built Location Saving PWA on Phone | Hero Extract


Clean up Noisy Audio Files

Do you have noisy audio files that need to be cleaned up❓ 

I was using ElevenLabs but their pricing annoyed me so I switched to a model at Replicate. 

Check out how amazing our noise removal tool cleaned up my audio in this video.

Want the free route instead❓  Here’s how we removed audio hum with FFMPEG.

AI Cleans Noisy Audio Instantly With Replicate 🔊 | Hero Extract
AI Cleans Noisy Audio Instantly With Replicate 🔊 | Hero Extract


Improving People’s Lives: Story #113

During a client call our client mentioned he had a $20 a month subscription to Chat GPT because he liked to create images.

I told him I could create a tool that would still let him use the Chat GPT models (even the new 2.5 model) and other image models (~52 right now) in OpenRouter.

If you want to wire OpenRouter into your own scripts, grab our AHK OpenRouter class.

I then had Claude build a simple JavaScript tool which takes an OpenRouter token and creates pictures.  

The great thing about this approach is you only pay when you use it❗

No monthly subscription needed❗

You can grab it here for a 1-time fee of $5.99


📚 What we’re reading


🤖 AI News that you Need to Know

10 NEW Github Repos Every Claude User Must Use

10 NEW Github Repos Every Claude User Must Use


⚡️Productivity tips:

Remove all distractions and use a Pomodoro timer to focus and crank out things faster than you can possibly imagine!


🤣 A spot of Humor:  Ricky is quite hilarious❗

The REAL Reason Behind ‘Acts of God’ | Out Of England

The REAL Reason Behind 'Acts of God' | Out Of England


What we 🅰utomated this week with AutoHotkey #147

This week was a pile of small tools that all solve annoying little problems.

I built a WebAssembly file renamer that runs right in the browser, played with AnyDoc for turning files like PDFs, Excel, and MS Word into Markdown (with OCR fallback when the text isn’t there), and set up a local concept search over my Markdown files.  While we’re on Markdown, we also built a Markdown previewer in 5 minutes.

I also got Claude relaying between my phone and PC over Tailscale using my own PWA and the Claude CLI.

In this week’s video I walk you through all of them, plus updates to Text Under Mouse and the AHK taskbar, and I let Fable run in the background chewing on tasks while I talk.

What we Automated this week #147
What we Automated this week #147


Clients say…

Thanks for all your help Joe. Folks are already excited about getting these updated. — Ron S.


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 607 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
  • AHK Tools
    • OpenRouter Provisioning API
    • Updated TextUnderMouse 
    • Borrowing Firefox Cookies
    • Dropbox Sync (enable/disable)
    • Removing Mark of Internet flag
    • AutoHotkey.dll
    • WatchFolders example 

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and 2 hours a week where we help people with their automation issues.


🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

  • If you think education is expensive, try ignorance — Derek Bok
  • The amateur does not know what to do. The master knows what not to do — James Clear
  • The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one — Mark Twain

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. Mankind has been using tools to work smarter, not harder throughout history.

What have you made that has saved you time❓   

If you’re new to this and want help, by all means schedule a call with us today❗

 

Finally a way to run executables without installing them! NO Admin needed!

AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

Last week I was asking Claude to create a Rust application and it said something that caught my eye.

Claude: “We’ve already done that in another tool when we created a WASM“

I did remember seeing the term a few times before when creating a Progressive Web App but I was busy at the time and didn’t ask it to explain the term.

Turns out that was a HUGE mistake❗

WebAssembly (WASM) is compiled code that runs full speed right in the browser, without installing anything❗

You just open a link and it works

No restrictions with Admin Rights, no Anti-Virus

It does this because (even though it is compiled code) it is sandboxed by the browser.

Don’t get me wrong, there are limitations to what you can do, however this opens a LOT of doors for us here at the-Automator❗

For instance, I created WASM versions of our Effortless Video Reducer and Quick Raw Edit

Another HUGE benefit is they are OS independent!   Our WASM tools will run in Windows, Linux, Mac, Chrome, iPad, etc.   Anything that supports a modern browser.

So suddenly we can truly create a tool that virtually ANYONE can run❗

You can learn more about WASM here.

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

ExtraHours


Creating an App based off a Picture

I had so much fun with my first Restaurant App based from a picture I thought I’d try another (this time recording it).

So, in this video, I show you how I use a few online pictures to build an App for a restaurant.

After creating it my friend Joey showed it to the business owner and they really got excited!

They wanted to know if we could also include a “rewards” aspect so we are building that in as well as in-app notifications.

AI Turns Menu Photo Into App in Minutes 🤖
AI Turns Menu Photo Into App in Minutes 🤖


Easily Creating Virtual drives

One of my oldest scripts is still one of my favorites.

Our tool, Drive Creator, for creating “fake” / virtual drives to quickly access projects is an enormous time saver!   I like it so much we added it to our AHK Explorer.

We still sell it as a stand-alone tool and you can see how it works in this video.

BTW – we’ve added more to the tool.  Now you can create a label and icon associated with the new “drive”.  It also comes with a script to automatically navigate you to the “real” folder.

Creating Fake Drives for easy access & Identical paths across computers
Creating Fake Drives for easy access & Identical paths across computers


Understanding Claude Skills

If you’re not using Skills with your AI you should be!

In this video NotebookLM explains why Claude Skills are important, how they customize AI to YOU and how to build them.

Claude Skills Explained in Minutes 🎯
Claude Skills Explained in Minutes 🎯


Improving People’s Lives: Story #112

Today I was chatting with someone at a local Chamber of Commerce meeting.

She’s feeling overwhelmed working on a project she volunteered on.

Too many things are “in her head” and she needs a simple, flexible way to let all involved know the plan (and be able to make changes).

I told her this sounded like a “fun” AI project where we can create an App to let people see what is planned and make updates.

The relief on her face said it all!    So great to easily provide tools that, just 2 years ago, would not have been possible w/o a 4 figure budget!


📚 What we’re reading


🤖 AI News that you Need to Know


⚡️Productivity tips:  To move your active window…

  • Win+Shift+Left Arrow :Moves the active window to the monitor to the Left
  • Win+Shift+Right Arrow :Moves the active window to the monitor to the Right
  • Win+Shift+Up Arrow :Maximizes the active window vertically (keeps its width)
  • Win+Shift+Down Arrow :Restores the window from a maximized state, or minimizes it

🤣 A spot of Humor:  I love this guy!

King of One-Liners | Andy Huggins | Stand Up Comedy

King of One-Liners | Andy Huggins | Stand Up Comedy


What we 🅰utomated this week with AutoHotkey #146

This week I turned a radiologist’s report shuffling into a screen capture, AI prompt, and paste-it-exactly pipeline, and spent a long session with Carol getting two speech engines to handle verbatim and diarized transcripts at the same time.

I also fed a two hour call into my AI segmenter and got back 11 clips, rebuilt Automate My Task in Rust so image based UI automation actually flies, and got the Effortless Video Reducer, Quick Raw Edit, and MP3 ripper running straight in a browser with WebAssembly.

In this week’s video I walk you through all of it, plus ClipShare for copy/pasting between devices over Tailscale without installing a thing.

What we Automated this week #146
What we Automated this week #146


Clients say…

Holy shit❗ This is amazing — Dr. Kamran J. (Radiologist)


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 605 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that are exclusive to Hero members❗

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

  • Help Hero Members with their Questions & Code
  • AHK Tools
    • OpenRouter Provisioning API tokens
    • Updates to TextUnderMouse
    • Borrowing Firefox Cookies
    • Removing Mark of Internet flag with AHK and PowerShell
    • AutoHotkey.dll
    • XPLorer (AHKExplorer & XP search)
      • Adjust Tree Width
      • Use same position for XP Search
      • Improve speed/reliability
    • WatchFolders example
  • Rust Tools
    • Virtual Camera
    • Rust DLL
    • FocusGuard (Prevent focus being stolen)
    • AutomateMyTask – image search benchmark
    • AnyDoc
  • Progressive Web Apps
    • Now ClipShare works with Files, not just pictures and text
    • Accessing Claude via CLI from my Phone
    • Effortless Video Reducer & Quick Raw Edit – Also caching
    • Song Sync
    • Burgers and more / HenHouse – in-app notifications
    • Google maps – photo and review driver

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and 2 hours a week where we help people with their automation issues


🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

  • Stop arguing — John Carlton
  • The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach — Benjamin E. Mays
  • Take responsibility for your actions. This simple habit has profound consequences you will learn to enjoy. Fix what you break, clean up your mess, watch your buddy’s back — John Carlton

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. If you cannot install programs, you really should look into WebAssembly!

It’s a total game changer for us❗

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!