Clipboard and Background Tasks

DesKit can let plugins respond to background events such as clipboard changes. This is powerful and sensitive, so design conservatively.

Clipboard events

If a plugin needs to run when the clipboard changes, declare the activation event and request the required permission:

{
  "contributes": {
    "activationEvents": ["clipboard:change"]
  },
  "permissions": ["clipboard:read"]
}

The plugin module must export the matching event handler. A plugin without a handler should not start background polling.

Supported content types

Clipboard plugins currently focus on:

• text;
• images.

File clipboard is not a formal capability yet. A possible compromise is copying file paths as text, but that only works on the same machine and is not true cross-device file clipboard sync. Unless your plugin says so explicitly, do not present it as full file clipboard support.

Writing to clipboard

Writing requires clipboard:write. Common uses:

• copy calculation results;
• copy a history item back to clipboard;
• copy transformed text.

If your plugin also listens to clipboard changes, avoid recording the content it just wrote as a duplicate history item.

Background task design

Keep background work disciplined:

• run only while the plugin is enabled;
• stop immediately when disabled or uninstalled;
• do not start watchers without actual handlers;
• do not keep stale listeners after a crash;
• let users disable sensitive behavior from settings.

Background tasks should not become hidden services. They should behave like clearly declared plugin capabilities.