Watch the clipboard and react

Goal. Every time you copy a URL, an agent or script does something with it, such as saving it to a list or opening it.

aos watch clipboard --max=1 --content

Commands

See what a change looks like:

aos watch clipboard --max=1 --content

{"event":"clipboard","at":"2026-10-13T06:36:30+05:30","seq":1,"length":14,"digest":"4b559aab5a29","text":"hello from aos"}

React to each change in a shell loop:

aos watch clipboard --content | while read -r line; do
  text=$(printf '%s' "$line" | jq -r .text)
  case "$text" in
    http*) printf '%s\n' "$text" >> ~/links.txt ;;
  esac
done

Wait for exactly the next copy, then act once:

aos watch clipboard --max=1 --content | jq -r .text | aos file append ~/links.txt

What to tell an agent

Watch my clipboard. Whenever I copy a URL, append it to ~/links.txt.

An agent runs the watcher in the background or with --max=1 in a loop. Over MCP there is no watch tool, because it never returns on its own.

Gotchas

• The first sample is a baseline, not an event. --max=1 means the next change after the command starts.
• Text is hidden by default. Without --content you get only the length and a digest. Clipboards hold passwords.
• --interval sets the poll rate. The default is 500ms.
• It needs a display session. On a headless box the clipboard has nothing to watch.