Show HN: Open-Source Windows AI assistant that uses Word, Excel through COM

https://github.com/Alkali-Sim/SmartestKid

by edmgood • 1 year ago

75 22 1 year ago

This started off as a project to understand how to get LLMs to interface with more traditional desktop softwares.

We were especially interested in tools related to schematic drafting and molecular simulation.

Decided to explore COM automation for more traditional Windows softwares as a starting point! Been using it to help some friends automate simple excel workflows. Thought we'd share!

ExxKA• 1 year ago

This is wild! If you want, this could become a great contender to the RPA products out there. I know people who are trying to build AI for RPA, but this seems like a much more solid approach.

Let me know if you are interested in turning this into a startup, happy to direct you to some relevant people.

edmgood2• 1 year ago

Very cool! Actively exploring some ideas in the computer-use space, happy to connect! Email in my bio :)

p_ing3• 1 year ago

FYI the Office product group considers COM deprecated. The "new" version of Outlook has no COM support, for example. While Word/Excel may be many years off, it's something to consider if you do move this forward.

I would also suggest moving to a compiled binary at some point. Very few Windows users are going to want to figure out Python in any capacity.

victor106• 1 year ago

What is the alternative to com?

jeroenhd• 1 year ago

I think a combination of Office Scripts with maybe Power Automate and perhaps some kind of browser extension? I don't think all of COM will be available in the web applications. They haven't bothered implementing COM in Outlook, so Excel and Word will probably end up becoming web applications too.

nereye• 1 year ago

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/overvie....

Note: this is in the context of 'programmatically extending Office/M365', I don't think the OP was referring to COM in general.

COM is at the base of WinRT, which is pretty much _not_ deprecated.

bitwize2• 1 year ago

What? COM is what made Windows great. Without it, it'll be just another shitty OS with a shitty DE, and you may as well just use Linux by that point.

TeMPOraL2• 1 year ago

COM doesn't work on the Web. They prefer to burn away the power features (like S/MIME in Outlook!) and release a strictly inferior, slower product, for the sake of...

... honestly I don't know what. It makes zero sense - it's pissing off corporate users, who are already captive. I'm guessing hidden inflation strikes again - they can't afford maintaining two versions, so they prefer to go with the worse one.

pjmlp2• 1 year ago

COM is not going anywhere, all new APIs since Vista are COM based (or its cousin WinRT), with some exceptions like userspace drivers (the COM based version 1.0 apparently wasn't well received).

This is only in regards to Office.

edmgood2• 1 year ago

Ah interesting to hear about COM - interested where you heard or if you have other approaches for computer use!

Yea, we're considering a .exe that people could download

Jayakumark• 1 year ago

Does Webdriver selenium work for new outlook ? any idea on how to automate , currently using win32com to read emails https://github.com/hornlaszlomark/python_outlook as graph api is disabled.

nfredericks• 1 year ago

Check out DavMail if you want programmatic access to your mailboxes. https://davmail.sourceforge.net/

abrichr• 1 year ago

Thanks for sharing!

There is an open issue in OpenAdapt to implement COM support: https://github.com/OpenAdaptAI/OpenAdapt/issues/873

This could be a valuable reference.

com2kid• 1 year ago

This is the type of innovations that AI should be used for. The fact that this type of product wasn't the very first thing Microsoft tried to create is unfortunate.

Microsoft is kinda-sorta pushing for machines that can do AI stuff locally with their copilot branded PCs, but I don't see any evidence that they are willing to go all in on AI powered locally controlled everything with no SaSS model attached.

Show HN: Open-Source Windows AI assistant that uses Word, Excel through COM

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