Haiku Application Scripting: BMessage Suites and Discoverable Automation
How applications expose properties and commands through the same messaging architecture used by native UI components.
Haiku scripting lets applications describe supported properties and commands through message suites. Automation tools construct BMessage requests, address an application or handler, and receive structured replies.
A scriptable application must define stable property names, supported operations, specifiers, error replies, and object targeting. Reusing UI labels as an API creates fragile automation when localization changes.
Scripting does not replace a command-line interface for bulk streams, but it fits desktop automation where a running application’s state matters. Validate permissions and untrusted inputs: a local message is still data crossing a process boundary.
Sources: Haiku scripting guide, BMessage API