Use AI on selected text anywhere in Windows

Setting up your first action

1. Open Settings, Actions and promptsThe built-in actions are listed here, each able to take its own global shortcut.
2. Assign a shortcut to one actionStart with one. Ask SideNote is the most generally useful, because the instruction changes every time.
3. Save and try itSelect a paragraph in any application and press the shortcut.

Resist assigning all five at once. You will remember one shortcut that you use daily; you will remember none of five you assigned in a burst of enthusiasm.

The five built-in actions

The four immediate actions carry a fixed instruction, which is what makes them fast. Rewrite asks for clearer, more polished text preserving meaning and tone. Translate preserves meaning and tone and adds no commentary. If you want a different instruction every time, that is what Ask SideNote is for.

Custom actions are where this pays off

A custom action turns a prompt you type repeatedly into a keystroke. It has four parts: an instruction, an optional shortcut, the position of {{selection}} inside the instruction, and whether it sends immediately or prepares the request for review.

The {{selection}} placeholder is what makes these flexible. Context can go before the selection, after it, or both, which matters because *here is a requirement, rewrite it as acceptance criteria* reads very differently to a model than the same text with no framing.

Custom actions worth building

• Acceptance criteria. *Rewrite this requirement as acceptance criteria in Given/When/Then form. Flag anything too vague to test: {{selection}}*
• Plain English. *Rewrite this for a reader outside our team. No jargon, under 100 words: {{selection}}*
• Devil's advocate. *Here is an argument. Give me the three strongest objections to it: {{selection}}*
• Error triage. *Explain this error to someone unfamiliar with this codebase, then list the three most likely causes in order: {{selection}}*
• Tighten. *Cut this by 40 percent without losing any substantive point: {{selection}}*
• Commit message. *Write a concise commit message summarising this diff: {{selection}}*

Use *prepare for review* rather than immediate send on any action where you will often want to add one sentence of context. Immediate send is right for the ones that are genuinely the same instruction every time.

What this looks like across a day

• Reviewing a specification. Select a paragraph, press Explain, and see what an outside reader takes from it. If that differs from what you meant, the paragraph needs work.
• Debugging. Select a stack trace in a terminal, press Ask SideNote, and type the one detail the trace does not contain.
• Writing. Select your own paragraph, press Rewrite, and compare. Regenerate for another variant. Keep the one that reads best, or none.
• Email in another language. Select, press Translate, read, carry on.
• Reading unfamiliar code. Select a function, press Explain. Combine with local folder context when the explanation needs the rest of the codebase.

The common property is that the source application never loses focus for longer than the round trip. That is the whole point: see using AI without leaving your workflow.

How capture works, and when it fails

Capture happens only when you press an assigned shortcut. SideNote Pro does not poll the clipboard and does not watch for selections.

On the shortcut, it identifies the active external window, preserves your existing clipboard, sends a native Ctrl+C to that application, attributes the resulting clipboard update to it, and restores your previous clipboard when it still owns the update. The intent is that using an action does not cost you what you had copied.

If shortcuts stop responding entirely, check whether global shortcuts are paused from the tray menu. Pausing releases every binding without ending the process, and the tray tooltip reports the paused state.