Give a mission a job that lives in a Mac app, such as an invoice in Numbers, a deck in Keynote or a letter in Pages, and it does the whole job while you keep working. It reads the window, fills in what it was given, checks what it typed and moves on. The app never jumps in front of you and your keyboard and mouse stay yours. Then it stops at exactly the moment a careful assistant would: just before Submit.
Skyflo 1.8.0 made computer use possible in any Mac app and gave missions the sign-ins they need to reach the sites behind the work. It was part of the release that made Skyflo your AI chief of staff, because a chief of staff is only as useful as the work it can actually finish. Skyflo 1.8.1 makes that work fast, quiet and checked.
In the background, and checked
In Numbers, Keynote, Pages and TextEdit, agents now work in the background. They type, click and edit without bringing the app to the front or moving your pointer, so the Mac stays yours while the work happens.
Speed is only worth having if the result is right, so 1.8.1 checks its own work as it goes:
- In a spreadsheet, every typed row is read back. The agent sees each cell by its reference and confirms what landed in it.
- A window action counts as done only when Skyflo has seen the change. A click that changed nothing is not reported as a success.
- Skyflo's own models see the screenshots their tools take, so a check can rest on what the window actually shows.
We measured four everyday tasks on a 1.8.1 development build on our test Mac, with GPT-6.1 Sol in Full Access. The 1.8.1 figures are medians of three runs. Every one of those runs passed, with no foreground actions and no steps from a person.
| Task | 1.8.1 | 1.8.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Numbers invoice | 19.5 s | 192.6 s, 7 foreground actions, not finished correctly |
| Keynote deck | 19.9 s | 151.6 s, 6 foreground actions, not finished correctly |
| Pages letter | 20.1 s | 107.6 s, 3 foreground actions, not finished correctly |
| TextEdit letter | 15.8 s | 78.6 s, 1 foreground action |
The 1.8.0 figures for Numbers, Keynote and Pages are single runs; the TextEdit figure is a median of three. For reference, ChatGPT took a median of 35.7 s on the same TextEdit letter.
What to look for in a computer-use agent
Any agent that clicks and types on your Mac should be able to answer three questions before you hand it real work.
- Whose permission does it run under, and how narrow is it? Access to your screen should belong to something you can name, see in macOS settings and turn off.
- Can it tell a routine click from a committing one? Most actions in a task are safe to redo. A few are not. The agent has to know the difference before it acts, not after.
- Where do your passwords go? Signing in is part of real work. A password typed into a model's conversation is a password you no longer control.
Here is how Skyflo answers each one.
Its own app, its own permission
Computer use now runs through a separate app, Skyflo Computer Use, with its own entry in macOS Privacy & Security. You allow it once for Accessibility and Screen Recording, and you can see it and revoke it there like any other app.
The agent chooses the window it needs by app and title. With Full Access it gets that window at once. In any other mode it asks you once per app, and an approval names one app; it never stretches to another. When a mission finishes, it gives its window back.
Steps run in the background wherever they can, so you can keep working while a mission fills a form in another app. When a step in another app needs it in front, Skyflo waits for you to pause typing or clicking, then carries on. Your activity pauses the work and never cancels it.
System Settings is off limits. A mission cannot take control of it, so macOS permissions stay with you.
In 1.8.0 the agent also reads deeper tables and forms, looks at the window when it needs to see it, works in Chrome windows, and fills a password field when the mission or you gave it the value. That value is never read back.
A judgement, not a word list
The hardest part of computer use is knowing when to stop. Earlier versions of Skyflo guessed from the words on a button. A list of words is wrong somewhere: it stops a harmless Save, or misses the button that places an order under a label nobody thought to list.
In 1.8.0 the agent makes the call itself. As it works, it declares every action as final or not. An action is final when it commits something outside Skyflo on your behalf that cannot simply be undone. Filling fields, ticking boxes, moving between screens, opening a file, saving a draft and downloading are routine.
Outside Full Access, Skyflo runs every routine step, then stops before the first final action and asks you. A Save or a Download no longer stops a mission. A Submit, a Send or a Pay does, in any app. The request appears in Needs you on Home, describing the action it is waiting to take. When you approve, Skyflo looks at the window again to confirm the same control is still there before it presses it.
Full Access is your standing approval for that mission, so its final actions go through as part of the goal. A Skill you have let finish on its own does the same; the Skills guide explains how a Skill earns that.
Sign-ins that keep passwords out of the conversation
Missions can now sign in to the websites they need, in their own browser tab, using:
- sign-ins you saved on this Mac,
- sign-ins read live from 1Password or Bitwarden, fresh from your vault each time a mission uses one,
- or sign-ins imported from Apple Passwords and your browser.
Passwords stay in your vault or your Mac's Keychain. They never enter a prompt, and no agent or AI model sees them. A sign-in belongs to the site you saved it for. If the page wanders off to a website it should not, the sign-in stops and hands over to you.
When a site sends a code, Skyflo can find it and enter it without showing it to ChatGPT or Claude.
- Mail. Skyflo reads your inbox only while a sign-in waits for a code, and only the newest messages. Mail needs to be open, and macOS asks you once to allow it.
- Messages. With Text Message Forwarding on your iPhone, a texted code arrives in Messages on your Mac. Skyflo reads it from the Messages window on your screen. It never asks for Full Disk Access and never opens the database where Messages keeps your history.
- Authenticator codes. Add a sign-in's authenticator setup key and Skyflo produces the code itself.
A code goes to the one sign-in waiting for it and is never kept or logged. When a sign-in needs you, the request appears on Home. Website sign-ins are included with Core and above.
How to try it
- Download Skyflo for Mac, or update to 1.8.1.
- Open Settings › Computer use and allow Skyflo Computer Use for Accessibility and Screen Recording.
- Start a mission in Ask for approval and name the app and window it should use, for example the invoice you fill in every week in Numbers. Allow the app when it asks, and keep working while it fills the sheet.
- Watch it complete every field and stop before Submit. Approve from the mission or from Needs you on Home.
- On a paid plan, open Accounts, save a website sign-in or connect 1Password or Bitwarden, and turn on Read sign-in codes from Mail and Messages.
The 1.8.1 release notes list everything else in the release, and the computer use guide explains window access and what stays under your control. How Skyflo runs a mission, and learns from it covers the rest of the mission. Download Skyflo for Mac and hand it the form you fill in every week.