Clipboard

clipboard

Push text to / pull text from a remote Windows clipboard over SSH. Two transport paths, selected automatically:

• ASCII + no newlines + NirCmd available → nircmd clipboard set (one-shot, fastest)
• Anything Unicode, multi-line, or no NirCmd → PowerShell Set-Clipboard via a temp file (lossless, no extra binary needed)

Reads always go through PowerShell Get-Clipboard (NirCmd's reader is ANSI-only).

Defaults (override via env vars)

CLIPBOARD_HOST="${CLIPBOARD_HOST:-${NIRCMD_HOST:?set CLIPBOARD_HOST or NIRCMD_HOST}}"
CLIPBOARD_NIRCMD="${CLIPBOARD_NIRCMD:-${NIRCMD_PATH:-/mnt/c/tools/nircmd/nircmd.exe}}"
CLIPBOARD_POWERSHELL="${CLIPBOARD_POWERSHELL:-/mnt/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/powershell.exe}"
CLIPBOARD_TMP_DIR="${CLIPBOARD_TMP_DIR:-/tmp}"
SKILL_DIR=<this skill directory>

The defaults fall through to nircmd's env vars so a user who set NIRCMD_HOST for that skill doesn't have to set anything twice.

Push — push text to clipboard

Triggers: "copy this to my clipboard", "put X on my clipboard", "send this to my clipboard", "I want to paste X".

"$SKILL_DIR/scripts/clip.sh" "the text to push"

Multiline / Unicode / piped:

cat some-file.md | "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/clip.sh" -
"$SKILL_DIR/scripts/clip.sh" "$(jq -r .body some.json)"
"$SKILL_DIR/scripts/clip.sh" "résumé with 🎉 émojis"

Resolve SKILL_DIR to the directory containing this SKILL.md in the active installation before running the helper. The wrapper auto-detects content type, picks the right transport, and reports which one it used. Always tell the user what landed on their clipboard so they know what they're about to paste.

Pull — read clipboard contents

ssh "$CLIPBOARD_HOST" "$CLIPBOARD_POWERSHELL -NoProfile -Command 'Get-Clipboard -Raw'" 2>/dev/null

If you only want the first line / a single value, append | head -1 locally. Get-Clipboard -Raw preserves newlines; without -Raw PS may collapse them.

Save a clipboard image to PNG

Useful when the user copies a screenshot and you want to look at it.

WIN_OUT="${CLIPBOARD_WIN_TMP:-C:\\Windows\\Temp}\\clip.png"
POSIX_OUT="${CLIPBOARD_TMP_DIR:-/tmp}/clip.png"
ssh "$CLIPBOARD_HOST" "$CLIPBOARD_POWERSHELL -NoProfile -Command \"Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms; \\\$i = [Windows.Forms.Clipboard]::GetImage(); if (\\\$i) { \\\$i.Save('$WIN_OUT'); 'ok' } else { 'no_image' }\"" 2>/dev/null | tr -d '\r\n'
ssh "$CLIPBOARD_HOST" "cat '$POSIX_OUT'" > "${CLAUDE_JOB_DIR:-/tmp}/clip.png"

The classic NirCmd clipboard saveimage works too if NirCmd is installed and the image is in standard formats:

ssh "$CLIPBOARD_HOST" "$CLIPBOARD_NIRCMD clipboard saveimage '$WIN_OUT'"

Clear / replace

ssh "$CLIPBOARD_HOST" "$CLIPBOARD_POWERSHELL -NoProfile -Command 'Set-Clipboard -Value \$null'"
# or via NirCmd:
ssh "$CLIPBOARD_HOST" "$CLIPBOARD_NIRCMD clipboard clear"

Why two transports

NirCmd's clipboard set writes via the ancient CF_TEXT clipboard format (ANSI / CP-1252) — emoji become ?, CJK becomes mojibake, em-dashes survive only by luck. It's the fastest single-shot path for short ASCII.

PowerShell's Set-Clipboard uses CF_UNICODETEXT and is lossless, but pushing the text through ssh requires quoting, and inline quoting breaks on any non-trivial content. The wrapper sidesteps that by writing to a temp file first and having PS Get-Content -Raw -Encoding UTF8 read it back.

Adapting to another machine

~/.claude/settings.json is the durable place:

{
  "env": {
    "CLIPBOARD_HOST": "workbox",
    "CLIPBOARD_TMP_DIR": "/mnt/c/Users/yourname/AppData/Local/Temp"
  }
}

One-shot:

CLIPBOARD_HOST=workbox "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/clip.sh" "hi from another machine"

For macOS, swap the whole pipeline for pbcopy:

printf '%s' "$text" | ssh "$CLIPBOARD_HOST" pbcopy

Not wired into clip.sh by default — add a branch if it comes up.

Notes

• Pushing an empty string (clip.sh "") clears the clipboard — Set-Clipboard -Value $null is the effective call.

• If clip.sh reports "pushed N bytes (unicode via powershell)" but the user pastes garbage, suspect the wrong active user / temp dir — the file path is in CLIPBOARD_TMP_DIR and must be writable by the SSH user.

• Companion skill nircmd covers everything else NirCmd does (audio, TTS, windows, keystrokes) — use it when the action isn't clipboard.

• Saving an image from the clipboard (Mode "Save image") needs the user to have copied an image first; you can't paste an image into the clipboard from here.