screenshot-test

name	screenshot-test
description	Visually test the monica GUI (popover or menu bar glyphs) by rendering it to a PNG (no screen-recording permission needed) and inspecting it. Use when verifying popover layout changes, menu bar glyph rendering, or reproducing a rendering bug.
user_invocable	true

monica GUI screenshot testing

screencapture fails in the agent sandbox ("could not create image from display" — no screen-recording permission). Instead monica renders its own view to a PNG from inside the process (MONICA_SHOT/MONICA_SHOT_MENUBAR env vars), which needs no permission — same technique as booker's screenshot-test skill.

Usage

.agents/skills/screenshot-test/shot.sh popover                # render the popover
.agents/skills/screenshot-test/shot.sh popover /tmp/p.png 2    # select 2nd row first (Down x2)
.agents/skills/screenshot-test/shot.sh menubar                 # render just the glyph strip
.agents/skills/screenshot-test/shot.sh menubar /tmp/m.png

The script builds the debug binary, launches it with the right env var, optionally drives Down arrow presses via System Events to change which row's preview shows, waits for the render, and prints the PNG path. Then Read the PNG to inspect the actual rendered layout.

Why the row-selection option matters

The popover shows real, live tmux/aistatus data — whichever agents are actually running on this machine, no demo-data seam. The first row's "Last message" preview can end up showing the very session driving the test itself (self-referential/confusing for a screenshot). Pass a row-down count to land on a different, more representative agent before the shot fires.

Knobs

• MONICA_SHOT_DELAY (default 1.5s) — total wait before the shot fires. First launch after a build is slower; increase if the PNG comes up empty/missing.

When to use what

• tmux/pid scanning logic → headless commands against tmux list-panes / ps / ~/.local/share/aistatus/*.json directly (no GUI needed) — see AGENTS.md.
• Popover/menu-bar layout → this skill (render to PNG + Read).
• Window geometry (size/position) only → CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo scratch script in AGENTS.md — no rendering needed, just bounds.

See AGENTS.md's "Verifying the GUI" section for the full technique writeup.