Clipboard

Clipboard

Copy generated text content to the user's clipboard.

When to Use

Use this automatically after generating any content the user will paste into another app:

• Emails (cold outreach, follow-ups, replies)
• Social posts (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Threads)
• Messages (Slack, iMessage, WhatsApp)
• Bios, taglines, ad copy
• Any standalone text block the user asked you to write

Also use when the user explicitly asks to copy something.

How It Works

Write the content to a temp file and pipe it to pbcopy. This avoids heredoc indentation issues that cause unwanted leading spaces:

TMPFILE=$(mktemp) && cat > "$TMPFILE" << 'CLIPBOARD'
[content here -- start at column 0, no leading indentation]
CLIPBOARD
pbcopy < "$TMPFILE" && rm "$TMPFILE"

IMPORTANT: The heredoc content MUST start at column 0 (no indentation). The Bash tool may indent your command, but the text between the heredoc markers must not have leading whitespace. If the content itself contains single quotes or special characters, the <<'CLIPBOARD' quoting handles it.

Alternative for short content (under ~1000 chars): use printf '%s' piped to pbcopy. But for longer emails and multi-paragraph content, the temp file approach is more reliable.

Rules

1. Strip markdown formatting before copying. The user is pasting into email clients, social platforms, or messaging apps -- not markdown renderers. Convert:

   • **bold** to plain text (no asterisks)
   • [link text](url) to just the URL on its own line, or link text: url if context helps
   • Headers (##) to plain text
   • Bullet points (-) to bullet points (these are fine, most apps handle them)

2. Don't include subject lines in the body. If the content is an email with a subject line, mention the subject line in your response text but don't include "Subject: ..." in the clipboard content. The user will type the subject into their email client's subject field separately.

3. Confirm what was copied. After copying, tell the user briefly: "Copied to clipboard." If there are placeholders they need to fill in (like [REPO LINK]), call those out.

4. One clipboard operation per turn. If you generated multiple pieces of content (e.g., an email + a social post), copy the primary one and mention you can copy the other if needed.

Platform Detection

macOS: pbcopy (default -- this is Ben's setup) Linux: xclip -selection clipboard or xsel --clipboard WSL: clip.exe

Check uname if unsure, but default to pbcopy.