Clipboard File-Drop List (CF_HDROP)

The clipboard layer carried text and images, and rich_clipboard added HTML, but the framework could never put a list of files on the clipboard — the CF_HDROP payload Explorer reads when you copy files and Ctrl+V them elsewhere as a real file copy. Building that blob is fiddly: a fixed 20-byte DROPFILES header followed by a double-null-terminated (UTF-16 by default) path list, with the header’s pFiles offset pointing at the list. clipboard_files isolates that error-prone packing.

The packing lives in pure, fully unit-testable build_dropfiles / parse_dropfiles byte functions (no device, any platform), with thin Windows-only set_clipboard_files / get_clipboard_files wrappers on top — the same split rich_clipboard uses for CF_HTML. The pure functions import no PySide6.

Headless API

from je_auto_control import (build_dropfiles, parse_dropfiles,
                             set_clipboard_files, get_clipboard_files)

# put two files on the clipboard, ready to paste into Explorer (Windows)
set_clipboard_files([r"C:\reports\q1.pdf", r"C:\reports\q2.pdf"])
print(get_clipboard_files())

# the byte layer is testable without a clipboard at all
blob = build_dropfiles([r"C:\a\one.txt"], point=(10, 20))
assert parse_dropfiles(blob)["paths"] == [r"C:\a\one.txt"]

build_dropfiles(paths, *, point=(0, 0), wide=True, non_client=False) returns the raw DROPFILES bytes; parse_dropfiles reverses it into {paths, point, wide, non_client}. set_clipboard_files / get_clipboard_files put and read the list via the Windows clipboard (get returns None when no file list is present).

Executor commands

AC_set_clipboard_files (paths → {set, count}) and AC_get_clipboard_files (→ {found, paths}). They are exposed as the MCP tools ac_set_clipboard_files / ac_get_clipboard_files and as Script Builder commands Set Clipboard Files / Get Clipboard Files under Data.