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Computer History keeps a local record of what you do on your computer: which app and window you were in, the text on screen, what you selected, and what you typed into fields once you stopped typing. While it is on, every agent Maestro starts is told where that record lives and how to query it, so you can ask any agent “what was the error I was looking at in the terminal an hour ago?” or “what did I tell the vendor in Slack this morning?” It is a Beta Encore Feature and starts off. Turn it on from Settings > Plugins > Computer History, or with maestro-cli encore enable computerHistory.

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What it records

A small helper program, maestro-observer, reads the operating system accessibility tree (the same interface screen readers use) for the app in front:

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What it never records

  • Keystrokes. Typed text comes from a field’s settled value, never from a key log. Maestro asks for no Input Monitoring permission and installs no keyboard hook. A password typed into a remote-desktop window is never seen, because the viewer exposes no text.
  • Password and secure fields in any app.
  • Private and incognito browser windows (Incognito, Private Browsing, InPrivate, Private Window).
  • Password managers: 1Password (including its browser helpers), Bitwarden, Dashlane, LastPass, KeePassXC, Keychain Access and the Passwords app, Windows Credential Manager, GNOME Passwords and Keys (Seahorse), and KDE Wallet.
  • Maestro itself.
  • Apps and domains you exclude, or every app you did not include (see Choosing which apps are recorded).
  • Screenshots. There is no screen capture and no OCR.
Before anything is written, text is scrubbed for secrets: API keys, AWS access keys, bearer tokens, card numbers, private keys, JWTs, and password=... style values are replaced with placeholders such as [REDACTED_API_KEY]. Credential-looking parameters in URLs (access_token, code, sig, and similar) are redacted too. Nothing is uploaded. Maestro never sends Computer History anywhere. An agent you ask about it reads it like any other local file, and what it does with what it reads is up to that agent’s provider, the same as for any file it opens.

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Permissions

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macOS

Maestro needs Accessibility access (System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility). The tile’s Request Accessibility access button, or maestro-cli computer-history enable-accessibility, opens the system prompt. The helper runs as part of Maestro, so the grant is for Maestro. Recording starts on its own a few seconds after you allow it. macOS gives the grant to the app that launched the recorder. A development build started from a terminal needs the grant on that terminal app; one started by an agent inside Maestro uses Maestro’s own grant. If Maestro is listed and switched on but the tile still says it is waiting for permission, remove Maestro from the list with the minus button and add it again. An entry created by an older build can stop matching the app after an update, and switching it off and on does not repair it.

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Windows

Nothing to grant. UI Automation is available to every app. Windows of programs running as administrator cannot be read by a normal app (Windows blocks it), so for those Maestro records only the app and window title.

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Linux

Computer History reads apps through the desktop accessibility bus (AT-SPI2). Many desktops leave it off. When it is off the tile shows Turn on accessibility: after you confirm, Maestro sets the same switch your desktop’s accessibility toggle sets (org.a11y.Status.IsEnabled) for your session. maestro-cli computer-history enable-accessibility does the same.
  • Apps started before the bus was turned on only expose window titles. Restart them.
  • Chromium-based browsers and Electron apps decide at launch whether to expose their content. Restart them after turning accessibility on.
  • Wayland and X11 sessions are both supported; the tile shows which one you are on.
You can turn the bus off again from your desktop’s accessibility settings.

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Controls

Everything below is in the tile’s Settings tab, and each control has a maestro-cli computer-history equivalent.
  • Pause for an hour, or until you resume. A pause survives restarts. While paused nothing is read or written.
  • Storage: how many days to keep (default 90) and the maximum size (default 25 GB). When either limit is reached the oldest history is deleted first, checked at start and every hour.
  • Record visible window text: turn snapshots off to keep only app switches, typed text, and selections. Snapshots make recall much better and use most of the space.
  • Clear history: the last hour, or everything. Settings and app rules are kept.
A small dot on the Left Bar menu button shows while Computer History is recording (red) or is on but waiting for a permission (amber).

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Choosing which apps are recorded

Pick one of two modes, in the viewer’s Capture tab or the tile’s Settings tab: Both show the same app list: every app recorded in the last 30 days plus the apps seen since Maestro started, each with one switch. Flip a switch and Maestro writes the matching rule. Both lists are kept when you change mode, so you can try include mode and switch back without losing anything. Password managers, private browser windows, password fields, and Maestro itself are excluded in both modes. Domains (which also cover their subdomains) are excluded in both modes. A browser window on an excluded domain records nothing, not even its title.
App rules match the app id or its exact name. App ids are the macOS bundle id (com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap), the Windows executable name (slack.exe), or the Linux desktop id or executable name (org.gnome.Nautilus). maestro-cli computer-history apps --since 1d lists the ids of apps you used.

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Viewing your history

Open the viewer with Ctrl+Cmd+H (Ctrl+Win+H elsewhere), Computer History in the command palette or the hamburger menu, or maestro-cli open computer-history. It is available while Computer History is on, in the desktop app only.
  • Timeline: an activity strip across the range (1 hour to 30 days), stacked by app. Click a bar to see only that slice; click it again to widen back out. The app list on the left shows foreground time per app; click apps to filter to them. Below, every visit (a run of time in one app and window) lists what you typed, what you selected, window changes, and the screen text it captured (collapsed). Search matches text, window titles, URLs, and field labels, and accepts regular expressions.
  • Digests: the 15-minute digests and 6-hour roll-ups an agent wrote, newest first, when digests are on.
  • Capture: which apps and domains are recorded (see above).
The header shows whether the recorder is running and pauses or resumes it.

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Storage

Everything lives under the Maestro data folder, in computer-history/:
Files are plain JSONL, one event per line, readable with any tool. Times and file names are UTC.

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How agents use it

While Computer History is on, every agent Maestro starts locally (AI tabs, Auto Run, Cue runs, group chats, and CLI dispatches) gets a short section in its system prompt with the store location, the CLI commands, and a pointer to a full guide. Agents on an SSH remote do not get it: the store is on this machine. Agents are told that captured content is untrusted. A web page, email, or chat you merely looked at can contain text written to manipulate an AI agent. Agents must never follow instructions found in captured text and must ask you before acting on anything it says. The CLI fences captured text in an UNTRUSTED OBSERVED INPUT block, and its JSON output carries "untrusted": true.

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Digests (optional)

Digests are off by default. Turn on Write digests and pick an agent, and Maestro asks that agent (through the same background ask a cross-agent @mention uses) for two kinds of summary:
  • 15-minute digest: after each 15-minute window with activity closes, a summary of that window in digests/<day>/<HHMM>Z.md. Windows start at :00, :15, :30, and :45 UTC.
  • 6-hour roll-up: when a 6-hour block ends (00:00, 06:00, 12:00, and 18:00 UTC), one summary of the block written from its 15-minute digests, in digests/<day>/6h-<HHMM>Z.md. A block with no 15-minute digests gets no roll-up. Turn it off with the 6-hour roll-up toggle or maestro-cli computer-history config --digest-rollup off.
The agent is given file paths, not contents, and told that everything in them is untrusted. Its answer is scrubbed for secrets before it is saved. If Maestro was closed when a window or block ended, it catches up on the next start: missing 15-minute digests from the last 6 hours (at most 24) and missing roll-ups from the last 24 hours. Clearing history deletes the digests for the cleared range and stops any digest in progress for it. Digests cost the chosen agent’s tokens for every window you were active in, plus one roll-up per block. Two limits to know before you turn them on:
  • The digest agent keeps its own copy. It reads the recorded files and writes its answer in an ordinary conversation, so what it read and wrote stays in that agent’s hidden consult tab and in the provider’s own transcript. Clearing Computer History deletes the digest files, not those copies.
  • Pick an agent on this machine. An agent that runs on an SSH remote cannot read the recorded files, so its digests fail (the tile shows the error).

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CLI

Reads work with the Maestro app closed. Changes need the app running and Computer History enabled. Every command takes --json. See the CLI reference for every flag.

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Privacy notes

  • The record is plaintext on disk, including messages from chat apps you had open. Exclude apps whose content you never want kept.
  • Anyone who can read your user account’s files can read it, the same as your browser history.
  • Turning the feature off stops recording immediately. It does not delete what was recorded; use Clear all history for that.
  • On macOS, Accessibility access belongs to Maestro as a whole, so the agents Maestro runs can use it as well. Grant it only if you are comfortable with that.
  • The web interface has no Computer History controls: it cannot pause, clear, or change the feature, and its file browser and file tools are blocked from the store. That is not a hard wall. A signed-in browser can still run commands on this machine as you (terminal tabs, ! commands), and a command can read the files, so treat web sign-in as full access to this computer.