Pbcopy

Clipboard (pbcopy/pbpaste/osascript)

Automatically copy text, HTML, or images to the macOS clipboard so the user can paste it directly.

When to Use

• The user explicitly asks to copy something to the clipboard
• You generate a snippet (command, code, config, URL, token) that the user said they want to paste elsewhere
• The user asks to copy an image or rich text/HTML to the clipboard
• The user asks you to "put it in my clipboard" or "copy that for me"

Plain Text

# Copy text to clipboard
echo -n 'text to copy' | pbcopy

# Copy multi-line text to clipboard
cat TitleThis is bold' | textutil -stdin -format html -convert rtf -stdout | pbcopy

# From an HTML file
textutil -convert rtf /path/to/page.html -stdout | pbcopy

# Copy raw RTF directly (pbcopy auto-detects RTF header)
cat  /tmp/clip.html
Title
Item 1Item 2
EOF
osascript <<'APPLESCRIPT'
use framework "AppKit"
set htmlContent to do shell script "cat /tmp/clip.html"
set pb to current application's NSPasteboard's generalPasteboard()
pb's clearContents()
pb's setString:htmlContent forType:(current application's NSPasteboardTypeHTML)
APPLESCRIPT
rm /tmp/clip.html

Images

pbcopy only handles text/RTF/EPS — images require osascript with NSPasteboard.

# Copy image to clipboard (PNG, JPG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, WebP)
osascript <<APPLESCRIPT
use framework "AppKit"
set img to (current application's NSImage's alloc()'s initWithContentsOfFile:"/path/to/image.png")
set pb to current application's NSPasteboard's generalPasteboard()
pb's clearContents()
pb's writeObjects:{img}
APPLESCRIPT

Reading Clipboard

# Read plain text
pbpaste

# Read as RTF
pbpaste -Prefer rtf

# Check clipboard content types
osascript -e 'the clipboard as record'

# Save clipboard image to file
osascript <<'APPLESCRIPT'
use framework "AppKit"
set pb to current application's NSPasteboard's generalPasteboard()
set imgData to pb's dataForType:(current application's NSPasteboardTypePNG)
if imgData is not missing value then
  imgData's writeToFile:"/tmp/clipboard.png" atomically:true
  return "Saved to /tmp/clipboard.png"
else
  return "No image on clipboard"
end if
APPLESCRIPT

Rules

1. Use echo -n (no trailing newline) for single-line values like URLs, tokens, and one-liners.
2. Use heredoc with 'EOF' (single-quoted delimiter) for multi-line content to prevent shell expansion.
3. Always confirm what was copied by telling the user — e.g., "Copied the API key to your clipboard."
4. Never silently copy — always inform the user when you put something in their clipboard.
5. Sensitive data — warn the user if clipboard content contains secrets, as clipboard contents can be read by other apps.
6. Temp files — delete any temp files (/tmp/clip.html, etc.) after copying to clipboard.
7. Choose the right method:

• Plain text → echo | pbcopy
• HTML/rich text → textutil -convert rtf -stdout | pbcopy (preferred) or osascript for native HTML type
• Images → osascript with NSImage + NSPasteboard (pbcopy cannot handle images)

1. macOS only — these commands use macOS APIs. On Linux, suggest xclip -selection clipboard or xsel --clipboard for text (rich content requires xclip -t text/html or similar).

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: lyhcode
• Source: lyhcode/agent-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.