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hotshot for Windows

Take a screenshot, and it lands in your terminal — the Windows port of hotshot. A dependency-light PowerShell script driven by a global hotkey: press the hotkey while your terminal is focused, snip a region with the built-in Snipping Tool overlay, and hotshot:

  1. Saves the PNG to %USERPROFILE%\Pictures\hotshot\hotshot-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.png (override with the HOTSHOT_DIR environment variable or -Dir)
  2. Rewrites the clipboard with multi-format entry: the image, the plain-text path, and a file drop list (the Explorer-copy equivalent of macOS’ file URL) — so Ctrl-V works in Claude Code, GUI apps, and CLIs that paste text
  3. Detects which AI CLI is running in the terminal that was focused before the overlay (by walking its child processes — Windows Terminal, conhost, etc.), brings the terminal back to the front, and types the format that CLI understands:
CLI in focused terminalTyped injection
Claude Code (claude)[C:\path\to\shot.png] (bracketed)
GitHub Copilot CLI / aider / OpenCodebare path (double-quoted if it contains spaces) + space
unknownbracketed (historical default)

This is the same clipboard/typing contract as the macOS app.

Install

Everything uses built-in Windows components (PowerShell 5.1+, Snipping Tool).

git clone https://github.com/hivecommons/hotshot.git
cd hotshot\windows
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1

The installer copies the scripts to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Hotshot and creates a Start Menu shortcut with the global hotkey Ctrl+Alt+H (shortcut hotkeys are limited to Ctrl+Alt/Ctrl+Shift combos — pick another with -Hotkey 'Ctrl+Shift+F12' etc.). Uninstall with install.ps1 -Uninstall.

Optional: AutoHotkey v2 for an instant hotkey

Start Menu shortcut hotkeys can take a second to launch. If you have AutoHotkey v2 installed, run %LOCALAPPDATA%\Hotshot\hotshot.ahk (or put a shortcut to it in shell:startup) and press Ctrl+Shift+PrintScreen instead.

Usage

  1. Focus the terminal running your AI CLI.
  2. Press the hotkey.
  3. Snip a region with the Snipping Tool overlay.
  4. hotshot saves the PNG, loads the clipboard, refocuses your terminal, and types the path in the right format. Press Enter.

Manual invocation:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File hotshot-capture.ps1 [-NoType] [-Dir C:\shots]

Parity notes

  • Capture UI: uses the native ms-screenclip: Snipping Tool overlay (Windows 10 1809+) instead of custom capture code — same select-a-region experience as macOS ⌘⇧4.
  • Focus tracking: the foreground window at hotkey press time is treated as the target terminal (the macOS app tracks the last-clicked terminal). Press the hotkey while the terminal is focused.
  • Typed path format: Windows shells don’t use POSIX backslash escaping, so the “bare escaped path” becomes a double-quoted path when it contains spaces — the Windows drag-and-drop equivalent.
  • No file watcher: the hotkey performs capture + inject in step. Win+Shift+S and other native shortcuts are unaffected.