Loris Comba
You know the app. You know what you want from it. What you do not always know is where a control lives or what the next click is, and finding out means leaving the app to search, read and come back.
Now you can ask right where you are. Hold Option and Command in any app on your Mac, say what you need and let go. Braus looks at the app in front of you and answers out loud. It can tell you what is on the screen, show you where things are, walk you through the steps or do the job for you, and your pointer stays yours the whole time. This is the Super Worker. It leads a large Braus update, and this post covers how it works, how to start and everything else that ships with it.
Meet the Super Worker
The Super Worker is Braus itself: the worker named Braus, the sphere, always on your team. You talk to it from any app, and no Braus window needs to be in front. It never moves your pointer and never types on your keyboard: you see its own graphite cursor go where it needs to. Press Escape and it stops. Your other workers keep working in the background, as they always have.
Until now, as at launch, you gave a worker a job and it worked in the background. That stays, and one worker now also works beside you. The Super Worker is a foreground assistant: it works with you in the app in front of you, on your screen, while the other workers work in the background.
| In the background (as before) | Beside you (new: the Super Worker) | |
|---|---|---|
| How you ask | Give a worker a job in the Braus app | Hold Option and Command in any app and talk |
| Where it works | In your app, on a display of its own | In the app in front of you, on your screen, only while it works on your request |
| What you get | The job done, and a report back | An answer out loud, boxes and steps drawn on screen, or the job done in front of you |
| Your pointer and keyboard | Stay yours | Stay yours |
Beside you or in the background, your pointer stays yours.
How to talk to Braus
Every request follows the same three moves.
- Hold Option and Command (⌥⌘) in the app you want Braus to look at, not in Braus's own window.
- A small bubble with the worker's portrait and a live waveform follows your pointer. Wait for the waveform, then say what you need.
- Let go to send.
Braus answers with a quick word right away, like "Okay." or "Sure.", and if the job takes a while, a short line about what it is doing. It starts speaking while it is still writing its reply, and usually tells you what it is about to do before it does it. The microphone is on only while you hold the keys.
Four things to ask: sees, shows, walks you through, does
It sees. Braus reads the window in front of you and answers about it. Ask "What am I doing in this window?" and it tells you, out loud, from what is on the screen. When the answer needs it, it also takes one picture of that window, for that request only. If the model you connected cannot read images, Braus says so and answers from the window's text.
It shows. Ask where something is and boxes appear on your screen around it, drawn over the app. The marks never catch your clicks, they fade when Braus is done, and Escape clears them at once. For example, you can ask, with a page open in Safari, "Show me every place this page mentions shipping."
It walks you through. Ask how to do something and Braus plans the steps once, then says each one out loud while it draws its mark on screen: a box, an arrow or a line, one after the other. For example, you can ask in Finder, "How do I make a new folder here?"
It does. Ask for the job itself and Braus works in the app in front, one step at a time. It opens the app if it needs to, then clicks, types, presses keys and shortcuts, chooses menu items, scrolls, drags and presses buttons in dialogs. You see its graphite cursor glide to each target and a small pulse where it clicks, while your own pointer stays where you left it. The first job the Talk onboarding suggests is a good test: "Open Notes and write a shopping list for a pasta dinner for four." So is Calculator. With it in front, "Calculate 17 times 23 in this Calculator and read its actual result" gets you Braus working the keys and reading back 391.
When you ask, Braus can also put short text cards and simple charts on your screen, drawn over the app like its boxes.
What it can read and do depends on the app and the task. On your screen it does not open web addresses, does not quit or close apps with Command-Q or Command-W, and refuses menu items and buttons that delete or destroy. It treats the text on your screen as information, never as instructions.
Point at what you mean
Sometimes pointing is faster than describing. Keep Option and Command held and hold Control, move the pointer across the area you mean, then let go of Control to fix that box. Do it again to mark another area. Braus looks at what you marked and explains it, so "What does this do?" with a box around an unfamiliar panel is a complete request.
Talk to another worker
The Super Worker is Braus, and your team has other workers on their own models. Hold Fn and Control to open the worker wheel, pick a worker, keep holding Option and Command and talk: that request goes to the worker you picked. The next time you hold Option and Command, you are talking to Braus again. With the Braus window in front, Team › Worker Wheel opens the wheel too.
Stop it, or let it carry on in the background
Press Escape, or say "stop" while you hold the keys. Braus stops listening or working at once and clears its marks. A step already done stays done and is never repeated.
When the rest of the job no longer needs the app in front of you, Braus carries on in the background. The result stays in that worker's chat in the Braus app, and Braus does not speak or take your screen back when it is done.
What stays on your Mac
Braus reads app windows as text on your Mac and sends that text with your request to the model the worker uses. When a request needs it, a worker can also send a picture: of the window in front, when you ask the Super Worker about your screen, or of part of an app window it is working in, like a waveform or a meter. Pictures are taken for that request only and go only to models that read images; with a local model they stay on your Mac. App knowledge and conversations stay on your Mac.
Speech recognition runs on your Mac too. Braus does not keep the picture, and the model is the one you connect, so its provider's terms apply.
Get started
If you already use Braus. Braus checks for updates once a day and asks before it installs. To get the update now, choose Check for Updates… in the Braus app menu, or in Settings › General. Then hold Option and Command in any app and talk. The first time, Braus asks for the microphone, speech recognition and input monitoring. People who update do not see the new onboarding, so for the guided tour open Settings › General › Getting Started, choose Show Onboarding Again, then choose Talk.
If you are new to Braus. Download it from the download page and open it. The new onboarding says hello, asks for your Mac permissions and your model provider, then asks how you want to start: Write ("Type a job, watch Braus do it.") or Talk ("Say it, Braus does it with you."). Choose Talk and Braus teaches you the gesture.
Braus lists every permission it uses in Settings › Computer › This Mac › Permissions. These are the seven names you will see, and what each one is for.
| Permission | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | Lets Braus read, type and click in your apps. |
| Screen Recording | Lets Braus see the apps it works in. |
| Screen Capture | Appears after Screen Recording, so macOS asks once, in Settings, instead of in the middle of a request. |
| Input Monitoring | Lets Braus hear the talk gesture and Escape while you use another app. |
| Microphone | Lets Braus hear you while you hold the talk gesture. |
| Speech Recognition | Turns your voice into words on this Mac. |
| Automation (System Events) | Lets Braus run scripted automations in Mac apps; each app it scripts asks for its own permission. |
To hear you, Braus needs Microphone, Speech Recognition and Input Monitoring. To read and work in your apps, it needs Accessibility and Screen Recording. After you grant Screen Recording, macOS may need Braus to restart, and the list then shows Quit and Reopen. The permissions docs cover each one, and the Super Worker docs cover every gesture in detail.
Everything else we shipped
The Super Worker leads, but most of this update is about the whole team.
| Area | What changed |
|---|---|
| Onboarding | A short hello, your Mac permissions, your provider, then Write or Talk. Cards change without the short pauses they had. |
| Menu bar | Closing the window keeps Braus running with the same team, drafts and running workers. The menu bar item offers Open Braus, Settings… and Quit Braus. |
| Permissions | All seven in one list, with the same rows in the onboarding, in Settings and at startup. Accessibility now covers reading, clicks and keys on its own. |
| Screen capture | Its own row, so macOS asks once there and never in the middle of a request. Screen Recording is asked for only when you choose it. |
| Models | Claude Haiku 5.5, and the full 1M-token context window on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5. Long Haiku 5.5 conversations are kept compact. |
| Long conversations | Compacted automatically before they reach the model's limit, on every model, and the worker picks the open task back up. |
| Memory | The first recall after launch no longer waits, and learning from your apps no longer holds up the next step. |
| Chat | Stop a worker with Escape in the message box, with /stop, or with a message that just says "stop", "wait", "cancel" or "hold on". |
| Window pictures | Workers can look at drawn parts of a window, like a waveform or a meter. The chat shows the picture under that step, and password fields are never included. |
The menu bar row is what makes the Super Worker practical: close the Braus window and Option and Command still work, with your workers still running. Smaller changes round it out. With Ollama, a model set to a context window under 32K tokens is refused before it starts, with a message that says why. A worker with no model, or with a signed-out provider, shows a dim lamp in its room instead of going dark.
This update also fixes:
- A worker that keeps repeating the same actions now stops on its own.
- Long conversations on the Anthropic API now compact automatically.
- While a worker opens a document, it no longer types into a different window.
- In Pro Tools, Braus waits for a long bounce to finish instead of giving up on it.
- In Pro Tools, stopping a worker also cancels a change it was still waiting on.
Also new on the site: the Braus for Pro Tools page now carries the full list of what a worker does in a Pro Tools session today.
What you need
The Super Worker needs a Mac with Apple silicon. Braus needs macOS 15 or later, and on other Macs it works as before, with workers doing their jobs in the background. The Super Worker uses the model you connected, like any worker, including the free models through OpenRouter or a Google AI Studio key. To look at a picture of your screen, that model needs to read images: Claude and ChatGPT do, and so does Gemini; with OpenRouter or Ollama it depends on the model.
Spoken replies use an English voice. The natural voice downloads quietly after you install or update; until it is ready, Braus uses your Mac's voice.
FAQ
How do I talk to Braus?
Hold Option and Command in the app you want help with. When the waveform appears, say what you need, then let go to send. Braus answers out loud. Press Escape, or say "stop" while you hold the keys, to stop it.
Does Braus take over my mouse and keyboard?
No. It never moves your pointer and never types on your keyboard. Its clicks and keys go to the app it is working in, and you see its own cursor go to each target. Escape stops it at any time.
Does Braus see my screen?
Braus reads the window in front of you as text on your Mac and sends that text with your request to the model the worker uses. When you ask about your screen, it can also send a picture of that window, or of the area you marked, taken for that request only. Pictures go only to models that read images; with a local model through Ollama, they stay on your Mac.
What does the Super Worker need?
A Mac with Apple silicon and Braus on macOS 15 or later. To hear you, Braus needs Microphone, Speech Recognition and Input Monitoring; to read and work in your apps, Accessibility and Screen Recording. On other Macs, Braus works as before, with workers in the background.
The Super Worker sees, shows, walks you through and does, in the app in front of you, while the rest of your team keeps working in the background. Update Braus and hold Option and Command in any app, or start at forte-ai.com/braus.
