Macrohelp — a developer's best friend

A lightweight overlay runtime. (~300kb harness) for Tasket++

Focused on QoL, coordinate capture, buffers, zone math, and translating intent into native Tasket .scht work through tasket-httpd daemon.

The daemon is a natively built sidecar for a running Tasket instance, with full GET support for schedules and availability of a local tasket session.

Macrohelp bundles machine code into readable instances that any automation friend would like to have on their machine.

Not only is the harness capable of spawning macros and workflow stacks chained with if-then sequencing, but macrohelp natively visualizes the unit circle, and performs dot product translations and Unit-Circle visuals for moving the mouse off relative location. The final feature is a Dance-Dance revolution style keyboard history stylized with open-source prompt-font

Want to get into .ani cursors? Check out the bilbata rainbow fork for windows here — (includes info on .ani and the windows .inf cursor-style for animating)

See the Quick Start here

Neat features worth noting:

• Native Circle Placement tool (uses either i+j coordinate offsets in circular grid / or radian/degrees)
• Paste library (great for quickly writing reused code snippets)
• Keyboard history + Coodinates right beside the mouse cursor
• Zone creation with the circle tool
• And of course rusable zones and workflows (looks almost like N8N)
• Program can build entire dynamic workflows easily with oneliner scripts. Example: discord automation that checks for incoming messages from a user, and a zone immediately grabs from the library of copypastas for that particular user.

Combine with a secondary framework! like:

• Surfingkeys hotkeys (rip elements and navigate like vim in the browser)
• Powershell here strings (example below) - paste a long multiline delimited with @' and '@ then see if it prints true or false
• regedited (rust) - "Dangerously grep a million-line markdown file" - or another database. Regedited is another project of mine that allows indexed code segments in a markdown file, allowing one to append the clipboard instantly with a snippet segment (more scale than SimpleSnippet or Scripter for Command Palette)

Show powershell here-strings guide

pwsh here strings and fuzziness with Windows-Native OCR:

if ($txt -match "this is the text`nI'm looking for") {
    @'
FOUND IT
This is the success block.
'@ | Set-Clipboard
}
else {
    @'
NO MATCH
This is the fallback block.
'@ | Set-Clipboard
}

# VARIANT with newline OR space alternative

if ($txt -match "this is the text(?:`r?`n| )I'm looking for") {
    'MATCH'
}

# Optional whitespace or newline between characters
$txt -match '(?i)I\s*N\s*C\s*L\s*U\s*D\s*E'

<#
(Matches:)
INCLUDE
I N C L U D E
I N C L U D E
I\nN\nC\nL\nU\nD\nE
I NCL UDE
INCL\nUDE
#>

# Optional letters:
$txt -match '(?i)I\s*N?\s*C\s*L?\s*U\s*D\s*E'

<#
(Matches:)
INCLUDE
ICLUDE (missing N)
INC UDE (missing L)
INCLDE (missing U)
INCLDE (missing U)
#>

# Optional misread letters (N-M , U-V, etc):
$txt -match '(?i)I\s*[N M]\s*C\s*L\s*[U V]\s*D\s*E'

<# 
(Matches:)
INCLUDE
IMCLUDE
INCLVDE
IMCLVDE

vs ..       '(?is)I\s*[N M]?\s*C\s*L?\s*[U V]?\s*D\s*E'
#>

# like:
$pattern = '(?is)I\s*[N M]?\s*C\s*L?\s*[U V]?\s*D\s*E'
if ($txt -match $pattern) {
    'MATCH'
} else {
    'NO MATCH'
}

<#
optional whitespace
optional newline
optional missing letters
optional OCR‑misread letters
case‑insensitivity
multi‑line text ((?s))
#>

---

# Reusable function:

function Test-OcrWord {
    param(
        [string]$Text,
        [string]$Word
    )

    # Build OCR‑resilient regex
    $chars = $Word.ToCharArray() | ForEach-Object {
        switch ($_){
            'N' { '[N M]' }
            'U' { '[U V]' }
            'I' { '[I 1]' }
            'O' { '[O 0]' }
            'S' { '[S 5]' }
            'B' { '[B 8]' }
            default { $_ }
        } + '\s*'
    }

    $pattern = '(?is)' + ($chars -join '')
    return $Text -match $pattern
}

<# Usage:
if (Test-OcrWord $txt 'INCLUDE') {
    'MATCH'
} #>

# Regular usage of here strings (general)

if ($txt -match '(?is)I\s*[N M]?\s*C\s*L?\s*[U V]?\s*D\s*E') {
    @'
SUCCESS BLOCK
'@ | Set-Clipboard
}
else {
    @'
FAILURE BLOCK
'@ | Set-Clipboard
}

Native cmd-only implementation at docs.shel.sh

• Powershell much better, trust.

---

For the httpd daemon, see the quick start since automated powershell is likely the best route for targetable latest Qt upstream! (Temporary cache dir nuked, as well, full Qt/VS opt-outs for telemetry)

Runtime Assumptions

• Tasket++ is installed and working.
• tasket-httpd.exe is running on http://127.0.0.1:7777.
• The canonical Tasket saved task folder is usually:

$env:APPDATA\Tasket++\saved_tasks

If you want to use the script playground:

• Assumed Win+Alt+Space = Powertoys Command-Palette hotkey
• Assumed favorite terminal (like Terminal Preview or Powershell Preview) is TOP-pinned command-palette

If you want to use the text-extractor zones:

• Assumed Win+Shift+Y = Powertoys Text-Extractor hotkey

If you want bash and python shells to work:

• Make sure they're on path
• winget install --source winget --id Git.Git
• winget install --source winget --id Python.Python.3.12
• Win+R sysdm.cpl > Advanced > Environment Variables > System variables PATH + Edit :
• C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Local\Programs\Git\bin\

Else, manually script them after {powershell}, example:

Assumed store of `uv venv .... bunch of stuff`, then `uv run python` == variable Z (buffered script)
{powershell}{Z}{enter}

---

Current Hotkeys

Shift+Alt+1  Paste and zone buffers.
Shift+Alt+2  Assembly playground -> Further, 'Q' is views
Shift+Alt+3  Circle and zone placement.
Shift+Alt+4  Left-click helper.
Shift+Alt+5  Right-click helper.
Shift+Alt+6  Middle-click helper.
Shift+Alt+7  Stop all Tasket tasks through the daemon.
Shift+Alt+8  Toggle Top-Right Panel
Shift+Alt+9  Save JSONs for MouseMove.
Shift+Alt+0  Save JSONs for KeySequence.

More info on applicable screens. Everything is pretty intuitive. Backend has no native hooks to mouse or keyboard control without Tasket.

---

Notes

• Circle movement and zone actions use Tasket schedules through the daemon, not direct WinUI cursor mutation.
• Paste buffers and zone buffers are deliberately simple: Macrohelp stores values, then emits Tasket JSON when asked.
• Registry Hub is the command surface for composing these primitives. It is not meant to be a native automation engine.
• View live workflow editor runtime environment when 'script too hard, need UI' <-- a 300kb ComfyUI app mimicing workflow module style for emitting/importing machine code. (Plain rendering to text files, all local js) - (Source Code)
• ReadThe docs.shel.sh

Technical Details

Feature	Implementation
Crosshair	WS_EX_LAYERED colorkey window, WM_TIMER at 16ms
Key display	Separate WS_EX_LAYERED window with UpdateLayeredWindow + ULW_ALPHA
Alpha rendering	GDI+ on 32bpp DIB section with per-pixel alpha
Key glyphs	PromptFont loaded via AddFontMemResourceEx from embedded RC binary
Key tracking	WH_KEYBOARD_LL hook, always active, thread-safe circular buffer
Fade effect	Linear opacity over 5s: opacity = 1.0 - age / 5000ms
Active combo	Sine pulse: 0.6 + 0.4 * sin(time * 2PI)
Hotkeys	RegisterHotKey with MOD_SHIFT | MOD_ALT
Dialogs	Modeless (CreateDialogParamW) with IsDialogMessage
Multi-monitor	SM_CXVIRTUALSCREEN / SM_CYVIRTUALSCREEN
File output	std::ofstream append mode, JSON with exact Tasket spacing

PromptFont Key Glyphs

The live key display uses PromptFont (by Shinmera, SIL OFL) for beautiful keyboard icons:

Key	Glyph	Key	Glyph
Ctrl	␧	Shift	␩
Alt	␨	Win/Super	␪
Fn	␦	AltGr	⑊
Left Mouse	➊	Right Mouse	➋
Middle Mouse	➌	Tab	␫
Enter	␮	Escape	␯
Backspace	␭	Space	␺
Arrow keys	⏴⏵⏶⏷	Delete	␷

License

• CursorOverlay is open source AGPLv3. No data ever collected, solely passion project.
• PromptFont by Shinmera (Yukari Hafner) is used under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.