Feature Request: Auto-capture selected text on open, and replace it in place after rewrite
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- Dominant language
- HTML
- Stars
- 8
- Forks
- 1
- Avg merge
- 1h 44m
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 3
Description
Summary
When text is already selected in another app, opening Snapdraft should pull that selection straight into the overlay, and after a rewrite, write the result back over the original selection. Select, rewrite, done. No manual copy, no manual paste.
The problem
Today the flow around an existing block of text is: select it, copy it, open Snapdraft, paste it, rewrite, copy the result, switch back, paste over the original. That's a lot of clipboard shuffling for the most common case, polishing text that already exists somewhere. The manual steps are exactly the friction Snapdraft exists to remove.
Proposed feature
- Auto-capture on open. Pressing the overlay hotkey pulls in whatever text is currently selected in the active app and populates the draft with it. If nothing is selected, the overlay opens empty as it does now. On by default, with a setting to turn it off for people who prefer the empty overlay.
- Replace in place. Because Snapdraft captured the selection, it knows where the text came from. After a rewrite, it writes the result back over the original selection in the source app, instead of only landing on the clipboard.
Fallback
When the selection can't be read (some apps block programmatic access to it), Snapdraft opens the normal empty drafting overlay. Quiet, no interruption, no worse than today.
Why this fits Snapdraft
The product's whole premise is polishing writing in place without leaving the app you're in. Auto-capture and replace-in-place close the last two manual steps in that loop, and both stay fully local: the selection never leaves the machine unless the user has opted into ChatGPT rewrites, same as any other draft.
Open questions
- Should replace-in-place be automatic, or a distinct "Replace" action next to the existing "Copy"?
- How should this interact with the current draft history, one entry per captured selection?
Contributor guide
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by tracing the overlay hotkey, the draft flow, and the existing Copy action. Resolve the open questions around automatic versus explicit replacement and draft history before implementation. Done means selected text is captured when available, the overlay remains empty when it is not, and a rewrite can replace the original selection without disrupting the fallback behavior.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- desktop
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100