SideNote ProRun AI actions on text selected in any Windows application
The fastest AI interaction is the one with no copying, no pasting and no window switching. Select text anywhere in Windows, press a shortcut, and the answer is already on its way.
Five built-in actions
| Action | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Ask SideNote | Captures the selection and waits in the composer for your question about it |
| Summarize | Sends immediately with an instruction to summarize clearly and concisely |
| Rewrite | Sends immediately, asking for clearer and more polished text that preserves meaning and tone |
| Explain | Sends immediately with an instruction to explain the selection |
| Translate | Sends immediately, preserving meaning and tone and adding no commentary |
Each action can be given its own global shortcut in Settings, Actions and prompts. Ask SideNote is the one that pauses for input, which makes it the right default for anything where the question changes each time.
Custom actions
The built-in five cover common cases; the interesting part is defining your own. A custom action specifies four things:
- An instruction. The prompt applied to the selection.
- An optional shortcut. Its own global key combination.
- Where `{{selection}}` goes. The placeholder marks the position of the captured text inside your instruction, so context can sit before it, after it, or both.
- Send behaviour. Fire immediately, or prepare the request in the composer so you can review or add to it before sending.
Examples worth building: *Convert this into acceptance criteria in Given/When/Then form: {{selection}}*, or *Explain this error to someone unfamiliar with this codebase, then list the three most likely causes: {{selection}}*, or *Rewrite this for a non-technical stakeholder, keeping it under 120 words: {{selection}}*.
What this looks like in practice
- A product manager selects a paragraph of requirements in a specification and presses Explain, to see what an outside reader would take from it.
- A developer selects a stack trace in a terminal and presses Ask SideNote, then types the one detail the trace does not contain.
- A marketer selects a draft paragraph in a CMS and presses Rewrite, three times, comparing the variants.
- Anyone selects a paragraph of a foreign-language email and presses Translate, without opening a translation site.
The common thread is that the source application never loses focus for longer than the round trip. See AI actions on selected text for the full setup walkthrough.
How capture works, and its limits
Text capture happens only when you press an assigned action shortcut. SideNote Pro does not read the clipboard in the background and does not poll for selections.
When you press the shortcut, it identifies the active external window before opening itself, preserves your existing clipboard, sends a native Ctrl+C to the source application, attributes the resulting clipboard update to that process, and restores your previous clipboard afterwards when it still owns the update. The intent is that using an action does not cost you whatever you had copied.
Windows blocks input injection into applications running at a higher integrity level. If the source application is elevated and SideNote Pro is not, capture will fail. Nothing is sent in that case and the assistant tells you rather than silently sending an empty selection.