How Context Awareness Works

This page explains what sits behind Context Awareness: the items Enconvo can read from your Mac, how it reads each one, and how you decide what goes into a message. Read it when you want to control what reaches a model, or when context you expect doesn’t appear. Context Awareness doesn’t watch your screen in the background. It reads context when you open SmartBar or when you add an item yourself, from the app you were using just before.

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What Enconvo can read

Each kind of context is an item that can be added to a message. Enconvo reads paths for Finder items, not the files’ contents.

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Browsers

• Address and title: read over Apple Events from Safari, Chrome, Edge, Arc and other Chromium browsers. Firefox doesn’t give its tab’s address, so Enconvo can’t read it.
• Page text: Safari gives it directly. For other browsers, Enconvo reads the window through Accessibility, which works only while the browser is the frontmost app.

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Other apps

Code editors, text editors and every other app get Current Application Content: the window’s title, the text Accessibility exposes, the document’s address when the app gives one, and a screenshot of the window. How much text that is depends on the app.

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When SmartBar opens

When you open SmartBar, it checks three sources in the app you were using. Settings → Context Awareness sets what happens with each one:

• Attach adds the item to the input as soon as SmartBar opens.
• Suggest lists it above the commands, so you add it with one click. A suggested page’s text is read only when you click it.
• Off leaves the source alone.

Only SmartBar uses these settings. Commands you run on a selection always receive the selected text.

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Add context yourself

1. In SmartBar, type #.
2. Type a few letters to filter the list of context items.
3. Pick one. Enconvo reads it and adds it to your message.

To use another character, change Context in Settings → SmartBar, under Search. The same group sets @ for commands, $ for skills and > for recent tasks.

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Permissions

Grant them in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Enconvo notices a change to Accessibility on its own. See Permissions for the full list.

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Context and tokens

Context counts against the model’s context window. Page text and screenshots are the largest items, and they can:

• Make replies slower
• Cost more with cloud models
• Leave less room for the conversation’s history

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Privacy and data flow

Captured context can become part of a saved conversation or knowledge base item. Model requests and selected OCR, embedding, transcription, or other tool providers may receive relevant content. Review Privacy & Security for the distinction between local storage and provider processing. A local chat model alone does not make every tool offline. Check the whole flow, including browser access, captures, and provider-based processing. macOS permissions reduce the context available; they are not a promise that every third-party app field can be classified as sensitive.

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Troubleshooting

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