Compute Focus Behavior

unicli compute defaults semantic providers to focus: false for actuating verbs. Use --focus or focus: true only when the selected provider requires the target app to be brought forward. An explicitly selected visual route is focus-taking.

The Browser Runtime Broker follows the same rule. Its default managed provider runs hidden against a Uni-CLI-owned automation profile under ~/.unicli/. Existing Chrome is a separate provider: background creates or claims an inactive tab in an existing normal window and verifies that focus and active-tab state did not change; foreground is available only through explicit --focus/--visibility foreground. Status, doctor, and session probes are read-only and allocate no target or about:blank placeholder. The broker is machine-scoped and reusable, while each Agent session owns distinct targets and may opt into a shared login/storage partition.

Defaults

One request selects one column before execution. Mechanisms listed inside a column remain within that provider's target, permission, and error boundary.

Verb	desktop-ax (macOS)	desktop-uia (Windows)	desktop-atspi (Linux)	cdp-browser	visual (explicit)
compute click	AXPress, then pid/window-bounded background input when the same ref has coordinates	UIA Invoke/Toggle/Selection, then HWND-bounded input	AT-SPI Action, then target-bounded display input	Attached renderer action	Foreground coordinate action
compute type	AXValue, then pid/window-bounded Unicode input	UIA Value/RangeValue, then HWND-bounded input	AT-SPI Value/EditableText, then target-bounded display input	Attached renderer action	Foreground coordinate input
compute press	pid/window-bounded key event for an app-scoped target	UIA provider key dispatch	Display-server key dispatch owned by AT-SPI provider	Attached renderer key event	Foreground key event
compute scroll	AX scroll action	UIA Scroll, then provider-owned wheel input	AT-SPI Component scroll, then provider-owned wheel input	Attached renderer wheel event	Foreground wheel event
compute screenshot	Window/screen capture; Screen Recording may be required	Owning HWND bitmap or bounded crop	X11 window or Wayland bounded capture	Attached renderer capture	Visual-provider capture

Source implementations: desktop-ax, desktop-uia, desktop-atspi, cdp-browser, and route planner.

Operational Notes

• compute click, compute type, compute press, and compute scroll pass focus: false to AX, UIA, AT-SPI, and CDP unless the caller sets --focus or focus: true.
• browser open, browser state, browser click, browser type, and browser screenshot default to the hidden managed provider. Use --background for verified non-activating existing-Chrome control and --focus only for an explicit foreground action. browser doctor, browser status, and browser sessions inspect existing runtime state without starting a provider or allocating a target.
• Chrome 136+ disables remote debugging for the browser's default user-data-dir. Treat a process with --remote-debugging-port but no listening port as a default-profile launch defect, not a retryable CDP race. The correct repair is a process-verified live attach or a Uni-CLI-owned seeded automation profile selected from unicli browser profiles --json. unicli browser doctor --json reports this through profile-ownership and Chrome-policy checks. unicli browser doctor --repair starts only the windowless broker; unicli browser --provider managed start explicitly starts the safe hidden managed provider. The profile_source section reports seeded, explicit ephemeral, unavailable, and policy-blocked paths; the chrome_remote_debugging section also reports RemoteDebuggingAllowed: false blocks every local CDP path until the managed Chrome policy is removed or set true, while true still does not bypass the Chrome 136+ default-directory restriction. Empty profiles require explicit unicli browser start --ephemeral or UNICLI_BROWSER_EPHEMERAL=1.
• macOS background input is not a global HID path. It resolves a running app and on-screen window, installs per-process event taps for the previous and target apps, sends an AppKit activation primer plus a center primer only when the target is not already frontmost, then posts events with target pid and window fields.
• The macOS background path uses Accessibility and Input Monitoring permissions. It may still fail for minimized, hidden, off-screen, disabled, or security-hardened windows; those failures remain structured errors rather than implicit foregrounding.
• Linux AT-SPI refs from compute snapshot / compute find --first can target compute click, compute type, compute scroll, compute screenshot, compute wait, compute observe, and compute assert. Descendant click, type, focus, scroll, and screenshot prefer native AT-SPI or bounded region operations before display-server helpers. Top-level X11 refs use wmctrl where a real window id exists; AT-SPI-only synthetic refs use the accessibility tree and native ComponentProxy.grab_focus().
• Windows UIA refs from compute snapshot / compute find --first can target descendant click, type, focus, scroll, screenshot, wait, observe, and assert when the OS exposes the UIA tree. Invoke, toggle, selection, value, focus, and scroll prefer native UIA patterns before provider-local bounded input mechanisms.
• Linux AT-SPI compute press remains a global display-server helper path, so it targets the active desktop surface.
• The visual backend runs only after an explicit visual route is selected. Its coordinate actions use focus: true because they act on the visible desktop.
• If a target is minimized, hidden, disabled, or off screen, prefer a fresh compute snapshot and a structured retry before enabling --focus.