Computer use

Computer use lets an agent look at your screen and use your mouse and keyboard in other apps, for example to test an app it built. It is optional and off by default.

Turn it on

Turn it on in Settings › Computer use. A task can also ask for it: pond task new --computer Safari.

Pond.app itself never gets Accessibility or Screen Recording. Those two permissions go to a separate small helper, Pond Computer.app. The Settings page has buttons that open the right macOS panes. The helper runs only while an agent drives.

What you see while an agent drives

• The agent's blob shows a driving face.
• A thin outline in the agent's colour runs around the display in use, with the label "<agent> is using the screen, Esc to stop".
• The agent's terminal header shows a red "Driving" dot, a small preview of the agent's last screenshot, and a Stop button.

Allowed apps

The agent must ask for each app. A sheet under the terminal header lists the apps and the reason. The buttons are Allow for this session, Allow once, and Don't allow.

• Return never grants. Return and Esc both mean Don't allow, so you have to click an Allow button.
• Apps you ticked when you started the task are allowed without a sheet. Pond keeps those picks in memory only, so after a relaunch the sheet asks again.
• Some apps can never be allowed: Pond and Pond Computer, system authentication dialogs, the privacy panes of System Settings, Keychain Access and Passwords, password managers, banking and crypto apps, and terminals.
• Finder, System Settings and IDEs can be allowed. The sheet shows a warning line for them.

Before a consequence

A click on a button labelled with a word such as send, buy, pay or delete (also in Dutch and Turkish) stops first. Pond shows a panel beside the window with a crop of the target. Allow has no key. Return and Esc mean Don't allow. No answer in 120 seconds means no.

An agent cannot type into a secure field.

Stop

• Esc stops every agent that is driving. The helper takes the key, so an agent cannot fake it. The agent's blob then says "Stopped. Say how to continue."
• Ctrl-Esc and the Stop button in the terminal header do the same.
• A click or key press from you pauses the agent for 3 seconds, so you can take over. Moving the mouse alone does not pause it.

Screenshots

Pond keeps the last frame per agent in memory only, for the header preview, and drops it when the agent stops driving. Screenshots go to Claude, and Claude Code keeps them in that session's history. The access sheet says so. Pond's own windows (terminals, blobs, the outline and sheets) are left out of every capture.