Show HN: Let your AI agents paint big arrows, boxes and text on your screen

big-arrow-on-the-screen (bigarrow) is a macOS command-line tool, plus a skill for Claude Code and Codex, that draws an arrow and a sign on top of every window. Clicks go through, your keyboard focus stays put, and the arrow removes itself. MIT licensed.

Real apps · Looks · Creative arrows · Starred by · What is it for? · Install · Commands · FAQ · How we know it works · For agents · Plan · Prior art · License

Your AI agent can refactor a monorepo, write a migration and explain monads, but when it needs you to click one button it prints "please click Allow in the dialog" into a terminal you are not looking at. bigarrow gives it a finger.

bigarrow point --element " Allow " --app " System Settings " --text " Franz, click Allow: Ghostty may control your Mac "

One transparent window above everything, on every display and every Space. Drawing needs no macOS permission at all. One Swift binary: no daemon, no menu-bar icon, no account, no telemetry, and, we checked twice, no AI inside. It is an arrow.

Real apps, real use cases

No fake dialogs this time. Real apps on the test Mac (macOS 27), neutral demo content, the real bigarrow, staged by scripts/real-scenes.sh. Every command is exactly what ran (the script adds --no-animation --json for the screenshot). An arrow should match the mood: a green "go ahead", a black "don't", a ring for "this little thing", a box for "this whole thing".

open " x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Accessibility " bigarrow start --element Terminal_Toggle --app " System Settings " \ --text " Franz, switch this on: Terminal may control your Mac " --from right --color green --close-button bigarrow start --element Add --role button --app " System Settings " \ --text " Not in the list? Plus. Then find it. " --from bottom-right --style ring --color orange --shape zigzag --size S

A deep link opens the exact pane, the arrow finds the one switch. Plan B is orange and zigzagging, because plan B always is. (On macOS 27 the pane is called Device Control and Data Access. Nobody would have found it by the old name.)

bigarrow start --element Animate --app Keynote --role radiobutton --text " 1. Click Animate " --from right \ --style ring --color purple bigarrow start --element " Add an Effect " --app Keynote --text " 2. Add an Effect " --from right \ --style box --corners sharp --color " #FF9F0A " --shape straight bigarrow start --element Play --app Keynote --role button --text " 3. Press play. Bask in the applause. " \ --from top --color teal --shape zigzag --size S

"Where do I add a transition?" Three steps, all on screen at once, in a toolbar that has given up on words.

bigarrow start --element PDF --role button --app TextEdit \ --text " Mom, click PDF, then Save as PDF " --from bottom --color pink --border white-black bigarrow start --element Cancel --role button --app TextEdit \ --text " Not this one, Mom " --from bottom-right --color black --size S

Helping a parent over a screen share, minus twenty minutes of "the little button, bottom left, no, left". The black arrow is for the button Mom clicked last time.

bigarrow start --app " Google Chrome:Sourdough " --element " Sourdough - Wikipedia " --role radiobutton \ --text " It's this tab, not the other 13 " --from top --shape zigzag --color " #5856D6 " --size L

--app "App:tab title" raises the right window and selects the tab first. The agent knew which tab it meant. Now you do too.

bigarrow start --element " icon view " --role radiobutton --app Finder \ --text " Not this one " --from top-left --style ring --color black --size S bigarrow start --element Group --role menubutton --app Finder \ --text " No, the other grid icon. This one. " --from top --style box --color green

macOS 27 removed the gear icon but added a second grid icon. It is always the other one.

Not a joke app: How to allow screen recording on a Mac , a real guide whose every screenshot is an arrow an agent drew.

Looks

It is an arrow, so we spent an unreasonable amount of time on how it looks.

Six looks over white, macOS grey, dark, black, red and a busy web page:

- --shape bend|straight|zigzag|spiral: zigzag for when it is really urgent; spiral loops once around the sign, for when it must be impossible to miss

- --style arrow|ring|box (rings and boxes are outlines, the target stays visible), --size S|M|L, --corners round|sharp

- --color red|orange|yellow|green|teal|blue|purple|pink|black|white|#RRGGBB