Desktop Pilot FAQs

Question 1

How much faster is Desktop Pilot than traditional screenshot-based automation?

Accepted Answer

Desktop Pilot offers a dramatic speed improvement, achieving 30-150x faster UI interactions compared to screenshot-based approaches. It directly interacts with the live UI tree, bypassing vision model overhead.

Question 2

What is Desktop Pilot?

Accepted Answer

Desktop Pilot is an MCP server designed for AI agents (like Claude) that provides native, lightning-fast, and highly reliable automation for macOS applications, eliminating the need for slow, screenshot-based methods.

Question 3

How does Desktop Pilot achieve its speed and reliability?

Accepted Answer

It uses a Smart Router to dynamically select the optimal interaction layer from Accessibility API, AppleScript, or CGEvent. It relies on semantic element references (ref IDs) for precise, coordinate-free interactions, not pixels or screenshots.

Question 4

Is Desktop Pilot easy to set up and use with AI agents?

Accepted Answer

Yes, Desktop Pilot is designed for quick setup, typically requiring just an `npx` command and a simple configuration update in your Claude environment. It boasts zero external dependencies and a minimal binary size (427KB).

Question 5

What types of macOS applications can Desktop Pilot automate?

Accepted Answer

Desktop Pilot can automate virtually any macOS application, including native apps, Electron apps, and scriptable applications (like Finder or Safari), by intelligently leveraging its multiple interaction layers for optimal performance.

Desktop Pilot

Desktop Pilot

Key Features

Use Cases

Key Features

Use Cases