How to automate old software that has no API

Most "AI integrations" assume the software you use has an API: a door for other programs to talk to it. A lot of real work happens in software that doesn’t. The stock program the shop bought in 2009. The accounting software only one person knows. The CAD license, the clinic calendar, the supplier portal that only works in a browser.

For those, the usual answer was "someone has to sit and type it in". Now an AI agent can be the someone.

Operate it like a person

ands doesn’t connect to the program from behind. It uses it from the front, the way you do: it opens the window, finds the field, types, clicks Save. To know what’s on the screen it reads the accessibility tree, the same description of the window that screen readers use, where every button and field has a name and a role.

That means:

• No plugin, no integration, no IT project. If you can use the program, ands can.
• Nothing to break on update. It finds "Save" by its name, not by a coordinate.
• Your license, your login. It runs on your computer, in your installed copy.

A typical job

Type the 30 orders from orders.xlsx into the stock program.

ands opens the Excel file, reads the rows, opens the stock program, and enters each order, row by row. You watch it happen. When it’s done it tells you what it entered, and if a row didn’t fit (a product code the program doesn’t know) it stops and asks rather than guessing.

Where this matters most

• Shops and warehouses with stock systems that predate the cloud.
• Accountants who move numbers from files into desktop bookkeeping software. See AI for accountants.
• Designers and engineers with licensed desktop tools that have no AI support: export every artboard, plot every sheet. See ands for engineering.
• Clinics and offices where the calendar or patient system is a desktop app.

When the screen isn’t readable

Some programs draw their own interface, so the accessibility tree is thin. In that case ands can look at a screenshot. Taking one is a sensitive step, so ands asks you first, and it goes back to the named buttons as soon as it can.

The honest limits

It’s as fast as the program lets it be: an agent clicking through a slow screen is still clicking through a slow screen. For thousands of records a day, a real integration is better. For the dozens that someone types by hand every week, an agent is the integration you can have today.