QACut

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Auto-capture a process into step-by-step screenshots ​

For: a process you would rather do than describe: an install, a settings change, an admin task you get asked about every week.

Writing a process doc by hand means doing the task twice, once to remember it and once to screenshot it. Auto-capture takes the screenshots while you do it once. Every click becomes a still with a ring where you clicked, and the stills land in a bundle you can prune, annotate and export.

The flow ​

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+3, drag the region, adjust its edges and press Record. A three-second countdown lets you get in place.
  2. Do the process. QACut takes a full-resolution still at the start, at every click or Enter with a ring where the click landed, and at the end.
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+3 to stop. The bundle window opens on the sequence.
  4. Click the first still to open the review view, then walk the run with the arrow keys: delete the noise, type a note for each keeper, move the click ring if the pointer was somewhere unhelpful, blur what needs it. Drag any still that landed out of order.
  5. Press Export doc.
Step 2: the badge and the tinted region while the stills are being taken.
Step 2: the badge and the tinted region while the stills are being taken.
Step 3: the bundle window on the sequence, each still captioned with its moment.
Step 3: the bundle window on the sequence, each still captioned with its moment.
Step 4: a click still in the review window, ringed where the click landed.
Step 4: a click still in the review window, ringed where the click landed.
Step 5: the exported document.
Step 5: the exported document.

What you get ​

A bundle whose stills are ordinary shots, listed in bundle.md as actions:

### 1.2
![1.2](01-settings-page/02.png)
Toggle animates but the state never saves.
_auto-captured at 3 s, click at 412,188_

And, from Export doc, a document with one numbered step per still and the note under each: one self-contained web page with the images embedded, or Markdown beside them.

No video is made. Agents cannot do anything with one, and recordings for people are the studio's job. What you get is a timeline of stills you can clean up, structure and annotate.

Tips ​

  • Use auto-capture for a process and single screenshots (Ctrl+Shift+2) for faults. A fault needs one shot and a note; a process needs the sequence.
  • Every still is a normal shot. It can be moved between groups, marked up in the editor and blurred like any other, and a bad one can be dropped before it reaches a document or an agent.
  • Move the click ring before you export if the pointer was somewhere unhelpful; it is the reader's cue to where the action happened.
  • Give the group a master note with Ctrl+Shift+G, or from the bundle window, and it becomes the intro to that section of the document.

How it works in detail · Download QACut