clipboard
Read or write Windows system paste-buffer text. Writes replace existing content and verify delivery by reading it back.
Instructions
Read or write the Windows clipboard. action='read' returns current text content (empty string if non-text). action='write' replaces clipboard with given text and verifies delivery by reading the clipboard back and comparing the bytes (UTF-16LE) for exact equality. Caveats: Non-text clipboard payloads (images, files) return empty string on read. Reading text larger than about 8MB (roughly 4 million characters, far above anything this tool can write) is refused immediately rather than copied. Calls give up after 4s (read) / 5s (write) — the usual cause is that the application owning the clipboard has stopped responding, which blocks the clipboard for every application on the machine, so retrying does not help until it recovers or is closed. A write that gives up leaves the clipboard in an indeterminate state (it may still complete once that application recovers), unlike code:'ClipboardWriteNotDelivered' where the write is known not to have landed — re-read before relying on the contents. Overwrites existing clipboard content on write. action='write' delivery-verification failure returns code:'ClipboardWriteNotDelivered' — typical causes: a third-party clipboard manager intercepts SetClipboardData, DLP / endpoint protection blocks the payload, RDP / Citrix clipboard transcoding strips the text, or another process clears the clipboard between Set and the read-back. Recovery: retry the write, or fall back to keyboard(action='type', use_clipboard=false) for short text. On builds without the native addon (backend:'powershell') writes are additionally capped at about 12000 characters and return code:'ClipboardWriteTooLargeForFallback' above it. Diagnostics: every response reports backend:'native'|'powershell' — the implementation that served the call. A successful write adds postCloseChecked: whether the read that catches a clipboard manager swapping the payload actually ran (native uses a separate second read; powershell's single read-back is that read), plus postCloseSkipReason when it did not run. On backend:'native' only, a successful write also reports sequenceAfterWrite (a Windows clipboard sequence number, for diagnosis only — the delivery verdict is always the byte comparison) and, when the post-close read alone confirmed the write, inSessionReadable:false. Examples: clipboard({action:'write', text:'hello'}) → write+verify; clipboard({action:'read'}) → returns current text.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| text | No | Text to place on the clipboard | |
| action | Yes | Action selector — one of: read, write. Per-action required fields are enforced at call time (see the tool description); this flat schema lists every action's fields as optional. | |
| include | No | Optional response-shape opt-in. `['envelope']` returns the self-documenting envelope (`_version` / `data` / `as_of` / `confidence`). `['raw']` forces raw shape (overrides DESKTOP_TOUCH_ENVELOPE=1 server default). Default behaviour is raw shape (compat with existing clients). |