understudy

An understudy watches. Then performs.

AI & Machine Learning Mobile & Desktop

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2Distinct people

2Mentions

0Explicit recommenders

466GitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An understudy watches. Then performs.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by hour2 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2026-03-12 17:04:35 UTC to 2026-03-12 23:07:36 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

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Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
Mar 12, 17:00	2026-03-12 17:00:00 UTC	2026-03-12 18:00:00 UTC	1	1	0
Mar 12, 18:00	2026-03-12 18:00:00 UTC	2026-03-12 19:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Mar 12, 19:00	2026-03-12 19:00:00 UTC	2026-03-12 20:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Mar 12, 20:00	2026-03-12 20:00:00 UTC	2026-03-12 21:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Mar 12, 21:00	2026-03-12 21:00:00 UTC	2026-03-12 22:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Mar 12, 22:00	2026-03-12 22:00:00 UTC	2026-03-12 23:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
Mar 12, 23:00	2026-03-12 23:00:00 UTC	2026-03-13 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1

What Hacker News says

2 sources

obsidianbases1·Mar 12, 2026

Nice work. I scanned through the code and found this file to be an interesting read https://github.com/understudy-ai/understudy/blob/main/packag...

In Show HN: Understudy – Teach a desktop agent by demonstrating a task once

bayes-song·Mar 12, 2026Submission

Show HN: Understudy – Teach a desktop agent by demonstrating a task once

I built Understudy because a lot of real work still spans native desktop apps, browser tabs, terminals, and chat tools. Most current agents live in only one of those surfaces. Understudy is a local-first desktop agent runtime that can operate GUI apps, browsers, shell tools, files, and messaging in one session. The part I'm most interested in feedback on is teach-by-demonstration: you do a task once, the agent records screen video + semantic events, extracts the intent rather than coordinates, and turns it into a reusable skill. Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d5cRGnlb_0 In the demo I teach it: Google Image search -> download a photo -> remove background in Pixelmator Pro -> export -> send via Telegram. Then I ask it to do the same for Elon Musk. The replay isn't a brittle macro: the published skill stores intent steps, route

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options, and GUI hints only as a fallback. In this example it can also prefer faster routes when they are available instead of repeating every GUI step. Current state: macOS only. Layers 1-2 are working today; Layers 3-4 are partial and still early. npm install -g @understudy-ai/understudy understudy wizard GitHub: https://github.com/understudy-ai/understudy Happy to answer questions about the architecture, teach-by-demonstration, or the limits of the current implementation.

120 points · Open discussion