{"slug": "we-let-chatgpt-and-claude-see-your-screen", "title": "We let ChatGPT and Claude see your screen", "summary": "Crade, a new desktop app for macOS and Windows, lets users capture their screen and send it directly to ChatGPT or Claude without manual screenshots or tab switching. The app uses a CLI-as-subprocess approach, piping screenshots to OpenAI or Anthropic via the user's own account, and was built with Python and PyQt6 instead of Electron for better performance. Crade offers a free tier and paid plans starting at $7.99 per month.", "body_md": "ChatGPT and Claude are great. But they can't see what's on your screen. The default workflow is: take screenshot, switch to ChatGPT, paste it, ask, switch back. Doing this 30 times a day burns hours.\n\nWe shipped Crade to fix that. A Mac and Windows app that floats over your screen, captures it on demand, and pipes it to your own ChatGPT or Claude account. No screenshots, no tab switching.\n\nThis is what we learned building it.\n\nThree flows, depending on which AI you bring:\n\n** ChatGPT (free or paid OpenAI account)**: we OAuth into OpenAI, spawn the `codex`\n\nCLI as a subprocess. Each prompt becomes:\n\n```\ncodex -p \"your prompt\" --image screenshot.png\n```\n\nThe AI usage is billed by OpenAI directly to your account.\n\n**Claude (Pro/Max account)**: same pattern with the `claude`\n\nCLI:\n\n```\nclaude -p \"your prompt\" \\\n  --allowedTools \"Read,Write,Edit,Bash,Glob,Grep,WebFetch\" \\\n  --output-format stream-json --verbose\n```\n\nStreaming JSON lets us show tool-use events as they happen.\n\n**Built-in tier**: HTTP to our Cloudflare Worker, which proxies to OpenAI (Free) or Anthropic (Pro). For users who don't want to bring their own.\n\nThe point: in BYO mode, we never sit in the middle. The screenshot goes directly from the user's machine to OpenAI or Anthropic.\n\nFix: bump our window level to **1500 (kCGAssistiveTechHighWindowLevel)**. This is the level used by accessibility tools like VoiceOver. It's above NSScreenSaverWindowLevel, so we win.\n\n```\nwindow.setWindowLevel(1500)  # kCGAssistiveTechHighWindowLevel\n```\n\nWe re-assert it every 500ms in a periodic check because some apps fight back.\n\nFor Windows, `Qt.WindowStaysOnTopHint`\n\nis enough. Browsers don't compete the same way.\n\nThis is where we make some readers angry: we picked Python + PyQt6 over Electron.\n\nReasoning:\n\n`claude`\n\nand `codex`\n\nis trivial from PythonThe tradeoffs: PyInstaller distribution is finicky, default PyQt6 UI looks dated (real stylesheet work needed), and the talent pool for desktop Python devs is smaller than for Electron.\n\nWorth it for our use case. Maybe not for yours.\n\n`claude`\n\nand `codex`\n\nseparately. Bundling them in the app made onboarding 10x smoother.Crade is at [crade.ai](https://crade.ai). Free tier covers daily use. Pro ($7.99/mo) and Premium ($19.99/mo) add higher caps and Agent mode (file system + shell access for the AI).\n\nCurious what other devs would build on this pattern. The CLI-as-subprocess approach for desktop AI tools feels under-explored.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-let-chatgpt-and-claude-see-your-screen", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/crade/we-let-chatgpt-and-claude-see-your-screen-3dph", "published_at": "2026-06-18 10:48:26+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-18 10:51:24.670134+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Crade", "ChatGPT", "Claude", "OpenAI", "Anthropic", "PyQt6", "Cloudflare", "crade.ai"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-let-chatgpt-and-claude-see-your-screen", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-let-chatgpt-and-claude-see-your-screen.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-let-chatgpt-and-claude-see-your-screen.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-let-chatgpt-and-claude-see-your-screen.jsonld"}}