Ntamara's General

Your first automation

Fifteen minutes, one real task, nothing on your live data. By the end you will have a recording that replays on its own, and you will know why the steps it kept are the ones it kept.

Free download Windows 10 or 11 No account, no coding

First, which surface are you recording?

Ntamara's General watches two different worlds, and it cannot see into one from the other. Almost every failed first attempt is this choice going the wrong way.

Browser Anything on a web page. It watches the page itself, so it learns names like the Save button.
Desktop Native Windows programs. Notepad, Excel, an accounting package. It watches windows and controls.
Both Only when the task genuinely crosses over, such as copying from a spreadsheet into a website.

The trap. A website open in your usual browser is not the browser surface. To the desktop surface an entire web page is one nameless rectangle, so every click becomes a position rather than a name, and it stops working the moment the page shifts.

Fifteen minutes, start to finish

  1. Unzip it, and run it

    There is no installer. Download the zip, unzip it somewhere sensible, and run NtamarasGeneral.exe from inside the unzipped folder, not from inside the zip itself. Windows will warn you once because the file is not signed with a paid certificate: choose More info, then Run anyway.

    It will not appear in your Start menu on its own. Right click the exe and pin it to Start, or send a shortcut to your desktop, and afterwards it opens like any other program. The version sits in the sidebar; anything before 1.3.2 has a fault where the recording window opens behind your other windows without telling you.

  2. Practise on the built in target, not on your own accounts

    The app ships with a fictional supplier called Kampala Supply Co for exactly this. Nothing you do to it matters. Learn the shape of the tool there first.

  3. Record, and work in the window it opens

    Choosing the browser surface opens a separate browser window. That window, and only that window, is watched. It comes to the front and fills the screen by itself.

    It starts signed out of everything, because it keeps its own profile. Sign in once and it remembers, for this recording and every one after.

  4. Watch the label under your cursor

    Whatever sits under the pointer is outlined and labelled with how it will be found again tomorrow. The colour is the honest answer, not a guess.

    Will find it by its test id, save-btn
    Durable. This survives a redesign.
    Will find it by the words Add to basket
    Fine, until somebody rewords the button.
    Will find it by where it sits on the page
    Fragile. Nothing to grip. Find a named button or a labelled field to use instead.
  5. Stop, then delete what you did not mean to record

    A recording keeps everything, including the housekeeping. In one real session, nineteen captured steps contained two worth keeping. Remove clicks on your taskbar, any click on Ntamara's General itself, and one time prompts such as Got it or Accept, which will not be there next run.

    Steps flagged with a warning landed on a pop up rather than the page underneath. They are marked, never deleted for you, because sometimes you did mean to click the thing on top.

  6. Test one pass before you trust it

    Test deliberately runs a single pass so you can watch it without committing. Read the strategy shown against each step: it tells you which rung of the ladder that step actually landed on, and anything resolved by position is worth fixing now.

  7. Choose how it repeats

    Only once a single pass is clean.

    ModeIt stops whenReach for it when
    Oncethe steps finisha one off job
    Datasetthe rows run outyou have a spreadsheet
    Countit has run a set number of timesyou know the number
    Untilsomething appears on screenyou are waiting on a condition
    Until failurea step runs out of anywhere to goworking through a feed to the end
  8. Let it run without you

    The Automate tab hands the job to Windows Task Scheduler, so it runs on a timer with no window open. On the same tab you can give it a web address to report to, and a summary posts there whenever a run finishes, which is how Zapier, Make or n8n find out it happened.

What will confuse you, stated plainly

What you seeWhat is actually happening
Nothing was recorded You worked in your own browser instead of the window the app opened. Only its own window is watched.
Every step is a position You recorded a web page on the desktop surface. To Windows the whole page is one nameless pane. Re-record on the browser surface.
It ran once, not eight times Test always runs a single pass, on purpose. Your repeat setting is untouched. Use Run for the full number.
Windows warns before it opens The download is not signed with a paid certificate, so Windows shows its usual warning for unsigned programs. Choose More info, then Run anyway. Every release publishes a checksum if you would rather verify the file.
A password was never saved Deliberate. Password fields record as an empty step you fill in yourself. Nothing you type into one is written down.
A step cannot find its control Point it at the right control from the run log. The app opens the page and outlines whatever you hover; your click is not passed on to the page, so pointing at a Delete button deletes nothing.

What it costs

Nothing. The download is free, there is no account, and nothing is charged later. It runs entirely on your own machine, so your data never leaves it.

The one thing it does without is a paid code signing certificate, which is why Windows shows a warning the first time you open it. The full manual ships inside the app under Guide, so it works offline too.