compatibility:Designed for Vellum personal assistants
Capture screen recordings as video files attached to the conversation.
Activation
This skill activates when the user asks to record their screen. Common phrases:
Start recording:
- "record my screen"
- "start recording"
- "begin recording"
- "capture my screen"
- "capture my display"
- "make a recording"
- "Nova, record my screen" (where Nova is the assistant's identity name)
- "hey Nova, start recording"
Stop recording:
- "stop recording"
- "end recording"
- "finish recording"
- "halt recording"
Restart recording:
- "restart recording"
- "redo the recording"
- "stop recording and start a new one"
- "stop recording and start a new recording"
- "stop and restart the recording"
Pause recording:
- "pause recording"
- "pause the recording"
Resume recording:
- "resume recording"
- "unpause the recording"
Routing
Recording is managed through dedicated HTTP endpoints (/v1/recordings/*) rather than text-based intent detection. Two routing mechanisms exist:
1. commandIntent (structured command) - highest priority
The macOS client can send structured intents with domain: 'screen_recording' and action: 'start' | 'stop' | 'restart' | 'pause' | 'resume'. These bypass text parsing entirely. The assistant checks for commandIntent before any text analysis.
2. HTTP endpoints
Clients call the recording HTTP endpoints directly:
POST /v1/recordings/start - start a screen recording
POST /v1/recordings/stop - stop the active recording
POST /v1/recordings/pause - pause the active recording
POST /v1/recordings/resume - resume a paused recording
GET /v1/recordings/status - get current recording status
POST /v1/recordings/status - recording lifecycle callback from the client
3. Normal processing
If no recording intent is detected, the message flows to the classifier and computer-use session as usual.
Behavior Rules
- Do not invoke computer use for recording-only requests. The assistant handles these directly.
- One recording at a time. If a recording is already active, starting another returns an "already recording" message.
- Conversation-linked. Each recording is linked to the conversation that started it for attachment purposes. However, since only one recording can be active at a time, stop commands from any conversation will stop the active recording regardless of which conversation started it.
- Permission required. Screen recording requires macOS Screen Recording permission. If denied, the user sees actionable guidance to enable it in System Settings.
- Mixed-intent prompts (recording + other task) are NOT intercepted by the standalone route - the recording action is deferred and executed alongside the task.
- Restart always reopens the source picker and requires source reselection.
- Restart cancel (user closes the source picker) leaves state idle - no false "recording started" message.
- Pause/resume toggle the recording without stopping it. The HUD shows paused state.
What This Skill Does NOT Do
- This skill does not contain recorder logic - the
RecordingManager and ScreenRecorder in the macOS app handle the actual recording.
- This skill does not provide shell commands or scripts for recording.
- This skill does not fall back to computer use for recording tasks.
- This skill does not handle informational questions about recording - those flow through to normal AI response.