the next UI isn't a chatbot, its your cursor
The most frustrating part of using AI for software help usually isn't the answers it gives you. It's getting the question into the "box" in the first place.
You're in a spreadsheet, or a design file, or some video editor you've used twice. You know what you're trying to do, you just don't know the next step. So you search for a video or search engine. You open a chatbot, describe the screen, paste a screenshot, explain what "this panel" is, wait, then come back and translate the answer onto the actual interface.
It works but it's also clumsy. The question didn't start in the chatbot it started in on another screen, doing real work.
"Why is this formula wrong?"
"What does this setting do?"
"How do I make this look like a hand drawn illustration?"
"Where do I click next?"
Most AI tools today pick one of two extremes. Chatbots give you great answers but make you do the hauling collect the screenshot, describe the app, explain "this," then apply the answer yourself. Agents go the other direction and offer to just take the task off your hands. Sometimes that's great. But you lose the part where you're steering, and actually learning something, while it happens.
I keep thinking there's a middle nobody's really built, or they haven't built it safely. Not a chatbot you file reports to. Not an agent that grabs the keyboard.
More like someone looking at the same screen as you, who you can just ask things, when YOU allow it.
You point at what matters. You ask in plain language. It reads enough of the screen to help with the next step. You still do the work. And nothing leaves your device unless you say so.
And I think that last part matters more than it sounds. If AI always does the work for us, we get faster output and duller instincts. If it can guide us while our hands stay on the task, we actually get better at the task.
This is the part of screen-aware AI that makes people nervous, me too. I don't want an AI quietly watching everything. I don't want surveillance with a friendly icon on it. The companion worth building is smaller and better-mannered: you turn it on, it's obviously on, it helps with whatever you're stuck on, and when you're done, it leaves.
That's openhawk. Private help when you need it, gone when you don't.
The first version is simple: point at what matters, ask, get walked through the next step, keep control the whole way.
I'm starting with the everyday places people get stuck spreadsheets, design tools, creative apps, dashboards, internal tools, all the small confusing UIs that have you on your 5th coffee of the day.
It's not meant to replace learning. It's meant to move learning closer to you.
If you've ever switched tabs just to explain the thing already on your screen I think this is for you.
openhawk is early, but I'm moving fast. I intend to make it as modular as possible to fit you and the way you work.
Follow along, or join the early list if you want to try it.