Build a report in a native app

Generate a financial report in Numbers on macOS by driving the native app with Cua Driver.

Numbers is a macOS-only app with no clean automation API for building a spreadsheet, charting it, and exporting a polished PDF. With Cua Driver, the agent drives the real Numbers app on a real Mac, the same way a person would, through the GUI.

This recipe is macOS-only. Numbers, Keynote, and Pages do not exist on Linux or Windows, so you need a real Mac now, or a cloud macOS desktop later.

Check Numbers.app

On your Mac, make sure Numbers.app is installed:

open -a Numbers

Numbers ships with macOS. If you removed it, install it again from the App Store before continuing.

Install Cua Driver

Install cua-driver with the one-line installer:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trycua/cua/main/libs/cua-driver/scripts/install.sh)"

Verify the CLI is available:

cua-driver --version
# cua-driver 0.5.x

Grant macOS permissions

Grant Accessibility and Screen Recording to the driver, then verify both grants:

cua-driver call check_permissions

If either permission is missing, approve it in macOS System Settings, then run the check again.

For long-running report jobs, configure the daemon so macOS attributes the permissions to the driver process. See Keep Cua Driver running.

Register the MCP server

claude mcp add --transport stdio cua-driver -- cua-driver mcp

Other MCP clients use the same cua-driver mcp command with their own config format. See Connect Cua Driver to an MCP client.

Ask the agent to build the report

Give the agent the task in plain language:

Fetch the last 30 days of AAPL daily closing prices. Open Numbers, create a new spreadsheet, enter Date and Close columns, add a 2D line chart, then export the document as a PDF to ~/reports/aapl-analysis.pdf.

The agent drives Numbers with launch_app, list_windows, click, type_text, set_value, and get_window_state.

Cua Driver does not include HTTP or filesystem tools. To fetch prices, the agent can drive Terminal and run curl, or drive a browser and copy the data from the page. For example:

curl "https://query1.finance.yahoo.com/v8/finance/chart/AAPL?interval=1d&range=1mo"

This Yahoo Finance endpoint is unofficial and may require a User-Agent header. If your data source needs authentication or a different format, have the agent use Terminal or the browser to retrieve it, then paste or enter the rows into Numbers.

AppleScript can help with small app commands if the agent runs it through Terminal, but the main workflow is still the agent driving the Numbers GUI through Cua Driver.

Confirm the PDF

Confirm the exported report exists:

ls -lh ~/reports/aapl-analysis.pdf

Open it to verify the chart and table landed in the PDF:

open ~/reports/aapl-analysis.pdf

Scale this out

One Mac builds one Numbers report at a time. To generate many reports at once, for example one per ticker, client, or reporting period, move the same workflow onto Cua Sandbox cloud macOS desktops and fan them out.

Use Run sandboxes in parallel to run the jobs concurrently, Choose and build a sandbox image to bake Numbers and any helper tools into the macOS image, and Drive a sandbox with the SDK to run an agent in each desktop.

A cloud macOS desktop is the only way to scale Numbers automation, since Numbers cannot run on Linux containers.