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. Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457912 Points: 11 # Comments: 5