Sidekick

Sidekick is a small app for your own computer. It sits in the tray on Windows, in the menu bar on a Mac, and connects that machine to your installation, so your agents can see its screen, work in its programs, run commands on it and reach the folders you choose. You decide how much, per computer, and nothing is on until you turn it on.

It is a power-user feature. An agent with access to your computer has real control of it, and what it changes there is changed. It suits people who already have some experience of working with AI and want it at the keyboard beside them.

The same app on Windows and on a Mac, where it is still an experimental build. There is no Linux version yet. It also comes as a browser extension, described below.

What it does for you

Say "what's on my screen?", "fill this form in on my machine", "run the backup script on the office PC", or "save that into my Documents folder".

The agent works on the computer you name. It can look at the screen and the open windows, read what a window contains and click, type and scroll in it, run a command in a real shell that stays open between steps, and list, read and write the folders you have shared. It says what it did each time, and where it could not prove that a click or a key landed it says so and looks again rather than pressing twice.

You can pair more than one computer: the one in front of you, the one at the office, the one in the cupboard. Each shows up under its own name, and each has its own access.

The four choices

On each connection's page you choose one of four, and the two in the middle show tick boxes for exactly what is allowed:

• Off. Connected, but the agent can do nothing. Where a connection goes when you switch which one controls the computer.
• Observe only. Looking: screenshots, the list of windows, what a window contains, and reading the folders you share. Nothing is changed. This is where a new connection starts, and your choice is kept across a restart.
• Change things. Looking, plus whatever you tick: acting on the screen (click, type, keys, drag), running commands, and reading or writing shared folders. Ticking Run commands hides the folder list, because a shell reaches the whole disk and folder limits cannot apply while it is on.
• Full access. Everything, with no sandbox: the screen, the keyboard, a shell running as you, and every file your account can reach. The page says so in as many words.

Pause all access, in the tray or menu bar, is the emergency stop: everything goes to Off at once and your choices are kept for when you resume.

Sitting beside it

When an agent wants the real mouse and keyboard rather than working in the background, a small prompt appears: Allow once or Deny. While it drives, the tray offers Take control, which stops its input until you choose Hand back. If you prefer, Allow auto takeover lets it take the foreground without asking, and only where you have allowed acting on the screen.

Chat on the desktop

Click the Sidekick icon in the tray or the menu bar and a side panel opens at the edge of your screen, above your other windows: the same chat you use in the browser, signed in already. The faces along its header switch between the agents you use most, and All agents finds any other. Keep the panel open pins it, so it stays when you click elsewhere, and Open in browser takes the chat to the full web app. A link you are given opens in your default browser, and a file or a preview opens in a window of its own.

Each agent can also have its own chat window, opened from its face in the app. Either way, the agent knows it is talking to you through that computer.

In your browser

Sidekick also comes as a browser extension for Chrome, Brave and Edge, from the Chrome Web Store. It connects the browser rather than the computer: the same chat opens in the browser's side panel, and an agent can work in the web pages you allow, in your own browser with your own sign-ins. You can have the extension, the app, or both.

• Off, Observe only or Change things, per connection, with See the page, Act on the page and Open and close tabs to tick. A new connection starts at Observe only, and Open and close tabs stays off until you tick it.
• Player One asks before it uses a page, naming it, with Deny, Allow once and Allow always. Allow without asking, off by default, is where you take Allow always back.
• While Player One works in a tab, your browser shows its own banner saying the browser is being debugged. Stop in the panel, or the banner's Cancel, ends it at once.
• Sites Player One never sees is your list of sites refused before anything starts, whatever the access says: the place for your bank or your work mailbox.
• Ticking Act on the page turns off the masking of passwords and one-time codes, because Player One then reads the page the way your browser's developer tools do. The panel says so under that box.
• Pause all access stops everything without changing what you allowed, and each tab keeps its own chat.

There is no shell and no access to your files from the extension: a browser has neither. Connect your own computer has the steps.

What it does not do

• It is not a sandbox. Change things and Full access let an agent do what you can do, and nothing here undoes it. Choose the access that matches the job.
• It does not run before you sign in to the computer, and it stops when you quit it.
• It does not carry your password. You sign in to your installation in your own browser; the app never sees the password.
• A shared folder you set to read only stays read only, and an agent asked to write there asks you to change the grant rather than finding a way round.