Actions

Configure AI transforms, text paste operations, and regex processing

What Are Actions?

Actions are the core feature of PasteSuiteAI. Each action takes your current text (or selected text) as input, processes it, and delivers the result back to you — by pasting it in place, copying it for later use, or showing a floating result overlay. You can trigger any action from the main panel, via a global keyboard hotkey, or with a mouse button combination.

Actions come in two categories:

• Default actions — shipped with the app. You can edit, disable, or delete them. Deleted or modified defaults are fully restorable via the Restore Default Actions button.
• User-created actions — added by you with the Add New Action button. These are not affected by Restore Default Actions.

Action Modes

Every action has one of three processing modes, selected in the action card:

Default Actions

These actions are included with every installation. All of them are editable. If you delete or modify a default action, click Restore Default Actions in the Actions tab header to reset all defaults to factory state.

Paste as Plain Text

Strips all formatting and pastes clean plain text. Always enabled by default and always free regardless of license status.

Diplomatic Rewrite

Prepends a diplomacy-focused instruction prefix before your text. Uses Static Text Paste mode — the template is delivered directly with no LLM call. Designed to be used with an AI chat interface such as ChatGPT or Claude.

Audio to Text

Records from your microphone and transcribes the speech using your configured STT connection. See Speech to Text for setup and configuration details.

Rewrite & Correct

Rewrites text in its original language to be clear, concise, professional, and diplomatically toned, while preserving all original content and intent.

Rewrite & Correct to English

Rewrites text in correct English, preserving all original facts, intent, and meaning with a professional tone.

Remove Empty Lines

Compresses sequences of three or more consecutive blank lines down to two using a local regex. Pattern: (\r?\n){3,} → \n\n. No internet connection required.

Simple Correction

Corrects grammar, spelling, punctuation, and clarity while preserving the original meaning and content.

Translate to English

Translates text into English, preserving the original meaning, tone, and formatting exactly.

Translate to German

Translates text into German, preserving the original meaning, tone, and formatting exactly.

Address Correction

Validates and corrects a postal address — street name, house number, postal/ZIP code, city, and country — and returns the corrected address in the same format as input. Auto-Copy Before is enabled by default so it captures the selected text automatically when triggered via hotkey.

Network Switch Interface Check

Analyzes a Cisco IOS running configuration and reports any interface blocks that do not comply with a defined access port template. Only non-compliant interfaces are reported.

Execution Modes

When an action fires via hotkey or mouse trigger, the Hotkey Execution Mode setting on the action card controls how the result is delivered. When triggered from the main panel, the button you click determines the delivery mode regardless of this setting.

Action Card Configuration

Each action is represented by a card in Settings → Actions. All configuration is done directly on the card.

Name & Description

The action name appears on the main panel button and in all dropdowns. The description is shown as a subtitle beneath the name on the card. Both fields are editable inline — click to edit, then press Enter or click away to save.

Triggers

Each action supports two independent global triggers that fire from anywhere on your system, even when PasteSuiteAI is not in focus:

• Keyboard hotkey — a global key combination (e.g., <ctrl>+<shift>+<alt>+p). Click the hotkey field to open the Hotkey Editor modal, press your desired combination, and save. See Keyboard Shortcuts for the full format reference.
• Mouse trigger — a mouse button (middle, X1, or X2) with optional modifier keys. Click the mouse icon button to open the Mouse Trigger Editor modal.

Use the Move Up and Move Down arrow buttons to change an action's position in the list. Order determines display order on the main panel.

Enabled & Visible on Panel

Hotkey Execution Mode

The three-segment toggle selects what happens when this action fires via hotkey or mouse trigger. See Execution Modes above. Default: Paste.

Auto-Copy & Auto-Enter

Result Overlay

Each action can show its result in a floating overlay window that appears on top of whatever application is in the foreground. Three settings control this:

See Result Overlay for full details on the overlay window behavior and appearance.

Action Mode

Select the processing type: AI Transform, Static Text Paste, or Local Regex Transform. Changing the mode updates the configuration fields shown below the selector. See Action Modes above for a comparison.

Prompt (AI Transform mode)

The textarea where you write the instruction sent to the LLM. The action processes your text using this prompt as the instruction.

• Use {selected_text} as a placeholder to embed your text at a specific position within the prompt. Without this placeholder, the input text is automatically appended after the prompt in a structured block.
• Press Shift+Enter for a newline inside the textarea.
• Click the Prompt Library link below the textarea to browse and insert a saved prompt from your Prompt Library.

Static Text (Static Text Paste mode)

The textarea where you enter the template that will be delivered. Use {selected_text} to embed the text you are working with at any position within the template. No AI connection is required for this mode.

Regex Configuration (Local Regex Transform mode)

Two fields define the transformation:

A live Preview panel lets you test the transform before saving:

• Type sample input in the Before textarea.
• The After textarea updates automatically as you type (with a short debounce delay).
• If the pattern is invalid, an error message is displayed in place of the output.
• Click the ? button next to the Pattern label to toggle a regex quick-reference panel with examples and a syntax table.

Connection Overrides

By default, each action uses the global default connection for its required capability (LLM, STT, or Vision). You can override this per-action to always use a specific connection, regardless of the global default.

Selecting the default option (displayed as the current default connection name) removes the per-action override. See Connections for how to configure connections and set global defaults.

STT Configuration (STT actions)

Actions that use speech-to-text display an additional STT Configuration panel with per-action audio settings:

STT actions also show editable prompt fields that apply to the active STT connection:

• Instruct mode prompt — the system prompt used when the STT connection operates in instruction mode (LLM-assisted post-processing of the transcript).
• Transcribe mode prompt — a context hint passed to the STT provider during pure transcription mode to improve accuracy.

See Speech to Text for full setup and configuration details.

Chain Action

The Chain Action dropdown lets you feed this action's result directly into another action as its input. The chained action runs immediately after this one completes.

• The entire chain counts as a single license action, not one per step.
• Actions in a chain are visually grouped in the list with a link connector icon between them.
• The list is automatically reordered to keep chained actions contiguous.

See Action Chaining below for validation rules and limits.

Delete Action

Click the Delete Action button at the bottom of a card to permanently remove the action. A confirmation dialog appears before the action is deleted. Default actions can also be deleted and restored later via Restore Default Actions.

Actions Tab Header

The header of the Actions tab contains three buttons:

Action Chaining

Action chaining lets you build multi-step pipelines where the output of one action becomes the input of the next, all triggered by a single hotkey press or panel button click.

Example: Chain "Audio to Text" → "Translate to English" → "Simple Correction" to transcribe, translate, and clean up speech in one step.

To create a chain, open an action card and use the Chain Action dropdown to select the next action in the sequence. The app automatically reorders the actions list to keep chained actions contiguous, with a link icon shown between connected cards.

How Chaining Works

1. The first action runs and produces its result.
2. That result is passed as the input to the next action in the chain.
3. This repeats until the chain ends or a step fails.
4. The final result is delivered using the first action's execution mode setting.

Validation Rules

• No cycles: An action cannot chain back to itself, directly or indirectly.
• No fan-in: Each action can only have one parent in a chain. Two different actions cannot both chain to the same downstream action.
• Max depth: A chain can be at most 20 actions long.
• Auto-cleanup on delete: If a chained target action is deleted, the chain link on the parent action is automatically cleared.
• Startup sanitization: Invalid chain references (missing target or cycles) are detected and cleared automatically when the app starts.

Licensing

The entire chain counts as a single action for licensing purposes, regardless of how many steps it contains.

Interactive Elements Reference