A Computer Use Agent（CUA） is moderately portable across operating systems because its core behavior relies on visual interpretation rather than OS-specific APIs. As long as the agent can capture the screen, move the cursor, simulate keyboard events, and analyze pixels, it can operate on Windows, macOS, Linux, or other desktop platforms. However, each operating system handles window management, input simulation, and screen rendering differently, so the CUA typically needs platform-specific adapters or drivers to perform low-level actions reliably.
Portability also depends on visual consistency. The CUA must adapt to differences in UI conventions—such as menu bar placement on macOS, window border styles on Windows, or varying font rendering across Linux distributions. These differences influence how the agent detects elements, reads text, and interprets icons. Developers usually improve cross-OS portability by tuning the CUA’s vision model with training screenshots from each environment, ensuring that it recognizes buttons, dialogs, and system-level notifications on all platforms.
To further enhance portability, developers may store OS-specific embeddings of UI patterns in a vector database such as Milvus or Zilliz Cloud. When the CUA encounters a new system dialog or layout, it can query the database to find similar states that occurred on other operating systems and reuse the associated reasoning or workflows. This helps the agent generalize more smoothly across platforms without requiring exhaustive rule-writing. While CUAs are not universally plug-and-play across operating systems, they achieve strong portability with the right architectural and training adjustments.