ShowUI-Aloha: Human-Taught GUI Agent
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → GUI and mobile agents
Abstract (arXiv)
Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are central to human-computer interaction, yet automating complex GUI tasks remains a major challenge for autonomous agents, largely due to a lack of scalable, high-quality training data. While recordings of human demonstrations offer a rich data source, they are typically long, unstructured, and lack annotations, making them difficult for agents to learn from.To address this, we introduce ShowUI-Aloha, a comprehensive pipeline that transforms unstructured, in-the-wild human screen recordings from desktop environments into structured, actionable tasks. Our framework includes four key components: A recorder that captures screen video along with precise user interactions like mouse clicks, keystrokes, and scrolls. A learner that semantically interprets these raw interactions and the surrounding visual context, translating them into descriptive natural language captions. A planner that reads the parsed demonstrations, maintains task states, and dynamically formulates the next high-level action plan based on contextual reasoning. An executor that faithfully carries out these action plans at the OS level, performing precise clicks, drags, text inputs, and window operations with safety checks and real-time feedback. Together, these components provide a scalable solution for collecting and parsing real-world human data, demonstrating a viable path toward building general-purpose GUI agents that can learn effectively from simply observing humans.
Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in GUI and mobile agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 34 of its 41 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 12 Jan 2026.
Builds on
34 of 41 references.
Closest ancestors · 15
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Scaling Computer-Use Grounding via User Interface Decomposition and Synthesis19 May
- 2025Agent S2: A Compositional Generalist-Specialist Framework for Computer Use Agents1 Apr
- 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents21 Jan
- 2024GUI Agents: A Survey18 Dec
- 2024Large Language Model-Brained GUI Agents: A Survey27 Nov
- 2024The Dawn of GUI Agent: A Preliminary Case Study with Claude 3.5 Computer Use15 Nov
- 2024GUI Agents with Foundation Models: A Comprehensive Survey7 Nov
- 2024OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents30 Oct
- 2024Agent S: An Open Agentic Framework that Uses Computers Like a Human10 Oct
- 2024Windows Agent Arena: Evaluating Multi-Modal OS Agents at Scale12 Sep
- 2024GUICourse: From General Vision Language Models to Versatile GUI Agents17 Jun
- 2024OSWorld: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents for Open-Ended Tasks in Real Computer Environments11 Apr
3 more
Other references · 19
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
- 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,869
- 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,234
- 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 2,006
- 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Webcited by 1,242
- 2023HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Facecited by 1,190
- 2023ViperGPT: Visual Inference via Python Execution for Reasoningcited by 603
- 2023Android in the Wild: A Large-Scale Dataset for Android Device Controlcited by 319
- 2018Reinforcement Learning on Web Interfaces Using Workflow-Guided Explorationcited by 284
- 2024ShowUI: One Vision-Language-Action Model for GUI Visual Agentcited by 232
- 2025GTA1: GUI Test-time Scaling Agentcited by 106
- 2024Agent-E: From Autonomous Web Navigation to Foundational Design Principles in Agentic Systemscited by 81
7 more
- 2023SheetCopilot: Bringing Software Productivity to the Next Level through Large Language Modelscited by 57
- 2019Next-Active-Object prediction from Egocentric Videoscited by 55
- 2024VideoGUI: A Benchmark for GUI Automation from Instructional Videoscited by 35
- 2025CoAct-1: Computer-using Multi-Agent System with Coding Actionscited by 35
- 2024Getting More Juice Out of the SFT Data: Reward Learning from Human Demonstration Improves SFT for LLM Alignmentcited by 32
- 2024AdaptAgent: Adapting Multimodal Web Agents with Few-Shot Learning from Human Demonstrationscited by 19
- 2019Learning Actions from Human Demonstration Video for Robotic Manipulationcited by 9
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 8.
8 papers.
- 2026GUIDE: Resolving Domain Bias in GUI Agents through Real-Time Web Video Retrieval and Plug-and-Play Annotationcited by 4
- 2026Plover: Steering GUI Agents through Plan-Centric Interactioncited by 3
- 2026OS-Marathon: Benchmarking Computer-Use Agents on Vast-Horizon, Repetitive Taskscited by 2
- 2026UI-Mate: Advancing Open-Weight Foundation GUI Agents with In-Context Demonstrationscited by 1
- 2026Securing Computer-Use Agents: A Unified Architecture-Lifecycle Framework for Deployment-Grounded Reliabilitycited by 0
- 2026Syll: Open-Source Personal Automation with Cross-Surface Executioncited by 0
- 2026Bridging VideoQA and Video-Guided Agentic Tasks via Generalized Keyframe Extractioncited by 0
- 2026Work2Skill: Capturing Human GUI Experience for Reusable Agent Skill Inductioncited by 0
- 2026Work2Skill: Capturing Human GUI Experience for Reusable Agent Skill Induction9 Oct 2026
- 2026UI-Mate: Advancing Open-Weight Foundation GUI Agents with In-Context Demonstrations16 Aug 2026
- 2026Plover: Steering GUI Agents through Plan-Centric Interaction16 Jul 2026
- 2026Bridging VideoQA and Video-Guided Agentic Tasks via Generalized Keyframe Extraction28 Jun 2026
- 2026Syll: Open-Source Personal Automation with Cross-Surface Execution28 May 2026
- 2026Securing Computer-Use Agents: A Unified Architecture-Lifecycle Framework for Deployment-Grounded Reliability8 May 2026
- 2026GUIDE: Resolving Domain Bias in GUI Agents through Real-Time Web Video Retrieval and Plug-and-Play Annotation27 Mar 2026
- 2026OS-Marathon: Benchmarking Computer-Use Agents on Vast-Horizon, Repetitive Tasks28 Jan 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Benchmarking and Improving GUI Agents in High-Dynamic Environments
- 2025ScreenLLM: Stateful Screen Schema for Efficient Action Understanding and Prediction
- 2026GUIDE: A Benchmark for Understanding and Assisting Users in Open-Ended GUI Tasks
- 2025LearnAct: Few-Shot Mobile GUI Agent with a Unified Demonstration Benchmark
- 2026Covering Human Action Space for Computer Use: Data Synthesis and Benchmark
- 2025UI-Vision: A Desktop-centric GUI Benchmark for Visual Perception and Interaction
- 2024Falcon-UI: Understanding GUI Before Following User Instructions
- 2023ASSISTGUI: Task-Oriented Desktop Graphical User Interface Automation