one thing we learned launching openowl: engaging on reddit, twitter, HN, product hunt, linkedin all at once is exhausting. especially as a solo founder.
so we built a system for it and just open-sourced the whole thing.
it's a claude code template with platform-specific guides and skills for each platform. you clone the repo, fill in your product details, and run /engage-reddit or /engage-twitter or
/engage-all and it finds relevant posts, drafts replies in the right tone for each platform, and you review before posting.
I keep going back and forth on this so I'll just put it out there.
OpenOwl gives any AI assistant the ability to see your screen and control your computer. That's a lot of access. People are right to be cautious before installing something like this.
The strongest signal I get from people on the fence is the same every time: "is this safe? what is the binary actually doing?"
Open sourcing the code answers that question forever. No more screenshots of code reviews. No more "trust me." Just the source.
So I've been running openowl as a paid product for a few months. $5/mo for unlimited tool calls, signed binary, hosted dashboard. 200 signups, 14 paid.
Last week I ripped out the licensing code and pushed the core as Apache 2.0.
It's a Python MCP server that gives any AI assistant (Claude, Codex, anything MCP-compatible) eyes and hands on your desktop. The 40 tools cover screenshots, clicking, typing, scrolling, OCR, accessibility tree queries on macOS, pywinauto on Windows, workflow recording and replay, and window watchers that fire when something changes on screen.
Install (cloning works today, PyPI publish queued):
OpenOwl is a desktop automation agent for macOS. It gives AI assistants (Claude, Codex, or any MCP-compatible AI) the ability to see your screen, click buttons, type into fields, and navigate across any app or browser.
You describe a task in plain English. OpenOwl does the rest.
It automates the tasks that APIs can't touch LinkedIn prospecting, Shopify admin updates, legacy CRM data entry, form filling, competitive research, and anything that normally requires you to sit there clicking for hours
I run OpenOwl, an MCP server that lets Claude, Codex, and other AI assistants control your desktop (screenshots, clicking, typing, all that). We've been growing and I want to bring on affiliates before opening the program publicly.
The short version: you get 30% of every payment, every month, for as long as your referrals stay subscribed. Not a one-time payout. Most SaaS affiliate programs I looked at offer 25-30%, so I wanted to come in higher since we're early and I'd rather give more to people who get in now.
