The verbs

This is what the engine can do, and — the column that decides where your suite can run — what each verb needs before it can answer.

These are the engine’s own calls, which is what your driving project reaches for and what a case file reaches through. A step in a case names an act by one word; the closed list of those words is on the case format, and the verb underneath it is here.

121 verbs in 39 families. 94 of them run against an application that references nothing and a desk nobody promised. 25 need a desk. 2 need the in-app half on the other end.

Those three figures are counted out of the catalogue on every build, and the catalogue is checked against the engine in both directions — a verb added without an entry is a red. So the table below cannot fall behind the engine without the suite saying so first.

What a verb can need

Most need nothing. A pattern act asks the control through its own accessibility peer: invoke, toggle, set value, select, expand, collapse. It works on an application that has never heard of this library, on a build agent, with the window in the background.

A desk means the foreground. The acts that synthesise real input — typing, clicking, nudging, pressing a key, walking a menu — put the input where Windows is pointing, so they need the foreground and there is nobody who can promise it. A run that asked and did not get it reports a hole: named, counted, and not folded into either a pass or a failure. That is the difference between a suite that runs unattended and one that only runs at somebody’s desk, and this table is where to find out which verbs you are reaching for.

The in-app half is a package you ship. These verbs need Winwright.InApp referenced by the application under test, so they are a decision about your product rather than about your tests.

None

Nothing. It reads what any Windows application already offers.

TheInAppHalf

The in-app half, on the other end. The engine cannot call it at all — the assembly carries no reference to it — so this is never an API call.

A hole is not a failure, and that is the whole point

A synthesised act that never got the foreground did not fail — it never ran. Reporting it as a failure sends you looking at your application; reporting it as a pass is the defect this project exists to refuse. It is reported as what it is, named in the summary, and it sets the exit code to 2.

Every verb

Family	Verb	What it does	Needs
Resolve	Once	one look for a locator under a root	nothing
	Until	the same, polled to a deadline	nothing
	Matching	every element one step matches	nothing
	Beneath	every element a locator's steps before its last one reach	nothing
Inspect	Window	the control view under a window handle	nothing
	Under	the same under an element already in hand	nothing
	Render	that tree as lines a person reads	nothing
	Rendered	the same lines with their parts kept	nothing
	Line	one element as its own line	nothing
	CopyableStep	the step a line opens with, where it has one	nothing
ElementFacts	Of	what UI Automation says about one element	nothing
PatternValues	Of	what its patterns read, as values	nothing
ActionabilityCheck	Of	whether an element can take an act	nothing
	Worded	one of the four as a person says it	nothing
Admitted	To	the door an act reaches its element through	nothing
	Of	the same against a look already taken	nothing
Subject	Unguarded	a subject with no project behind it	nothing
Locator	Parse	a locator out of its text	nothing
	TryParse	the same without throwing	nothing
UiaVocabulary	IsControlType	whether a name is a control type	nothing
	IsPattern	whether a name is a pattern	nothing
	ControlTypeFor	the control type one name means	nothing
	Nearest	the nearest name to a misspelt one	nothing
Attempt	Once	one look, which is what asking whether a thing has gone needs	nothing
	Until	a deadline on a sighting	nothing
	UntilTrue	a deadline on a condition	nothing
Retry	Bounded	an act attempted to a cap and counted	nothing
	Recorded	that count stamped onto the step a trace records	nothing
Focus	In	what holds the focus, read against the application under test	nothing
	Held	the same, or nothing where the focus went somewhere else	nothing
Preflight	Check	what each declared act needs against the tree	nothing
	Offers	what one locator's element offers	nothing
	Require	the same, stopping on a refusal	nothing
Act	Invoke	press it through its own accessibility peer	nothing
	Toggle	flip it through the toggle pattern	nothing
	SetValue	write through the value pattern	nothing
	SetRange	move through the range pattern	nothing
	Select	select through the selection-item pattern	nothing
	Expand	open through the expand-collapse pattern	nothing
	Collapse	shut through the same	nothing
Selecting	Confirmed	select and confirm, escalating only if allowed	nothing
Surface	AsFound	put the controls back the way they were	nothing
Pick	Values	every value a picker holds	nothing
Pointer	Check	each declared reason against the tree	nothing
	Reasons	what needs a desktop, grouped by why	nothing
	Summarise	the same as one block of text	nothing
	Worded	one reason as a person says it	nothing
	MayGetAPeer	whether a peer would make the act unnecessary	nothing
	Click	synthesised mouse input	a desk
	DoubleClick	two of the same	a desk
	Run	a declared pointer act	a desk
Keyboard	Type	synthesised keys into a control	a desk
	Run	a declared typing act	a desk
Traversal	Press	a traversal key at a window	a desk
	Nudge	a range moved by a key	a desk
	WhoHasFocus	what holds the focus, asked and not pressed	nothing
Synthesised	Type	typing, as a step's own result	a desk
	Click	a click a case had to say the reason for	a desk
	Nudge	an arrow key at a range control, as a step	a desk
Chord	TryParse	whether text a case wrote is a chord, answered before anything is driven	nothing
	Spelled	what a chord may be, which is what a refusal lists when one is not	nothing
Synthesised	Press	a traversal key at the window, or WW317's chord — one verb, and neither needs anything of the application beyond the desktop the keys go to	a desk
Pick	Value	reach a value, by keyboard where the pattern will not	a desk
	At	reach whatever sits at a position, by the same two routes	a desk
Synthesised	Pick	reaching a value in a picker, as a step	a desk
	PickAt	reaching a position in a picker, as a step	a desk
	ExpandMenu	opening a submenu with Right, as a step	a desk
Menu	Enter	enter a menu bar the way a keyboard user does	a desk
	To	walk to an entry	a desk
	Expand	open a submenu	a desk
	Dismiss	close what was opened	a desk
	Highlighted	what a menu is highlighting, read and not pressed	nothing
NotificationArea	Tray	the taskbar's notification area	nothing
	Overflow	the flyout, where it is open	nothing
	Chevron	the button that opens it	nothing
	Showing	the icons on the bar	nothing
	Hidden	the icons in the flyout	nothing
	ElementFor	one icon as an element	nothing
	Reachable	whether there is a notification area to look at	nothing
	Placing	whether this desk is placing icons at all, wherever they land — the question a case asks after failing to find its own, and the one that tells a slow shell from an absent icon	nothing
	Find	an icon by name, opening the flyout to look	a desk
	OpenOverflow	open the flyout	a desk
	CloseOverflow	shut it again	a desk
	OpenMenu	an icon's context menu, by key	a desk
	Click	an icon clicked with the primary button, at its centre (WW483)	a desk
TopLevelWindows	OfProcess	every top-level window a process owns	nothing
	Largest	the largest of them, which is the frame where there is one	nothing
	DrawnByTheShell	whether a window class is one the shell draws on an application's behalf, which is how the drop shadow behind a menu stops being the largest window a tray process owns	nothing
Foreground	Now	who holds the keyboard, read straight from Windows	nothing
	Check	whether a named window holds it	nothing
	Waited	the same, waited for over a budget the caller declares — WW470, for a window that is still coming forward rather than one somebody else is holding	nothing
	Between	the same judgement over two sightings a caller already has	nothing
ForeignInput	Watch	start a window in which this run owns the machine	nothing
	Read	whether anybody else used it in that window	nothing
Desk	Read	whether there is an interactive desk to drive at all	nothing
	Blocked	the reading as the one line a refusal prints	nothing
	Caught	whether a throw is the desk refusing rather than the code failing	nothing
	WorthAnotherLook	whether a refusal is one a second look could answer	nothing
AppTarget	AttachTo	a target from a pid this run did not start	nothing
	AttachToWindow	the same from a window handle	nothing
	FromLaunch	a target from a process this run launched, arguments kept	nothing
ProcessRegister	For	a register with the stopping budget a project declares	nothing
Obstruction	Reading	what stands over a region, read off the z order	nothing
PaintedFrame	Of	what a window actually paints inside the rectangle it owns	nothing
SeeThrough	Of	whether a window's own pixels are composited with what is behind them, read off its style bits and its layer attributes — an application that references nothing still has both	nothing
DerivedSet	From	the expected set out of the strings the project declares	nothing
	Reported	the expected set out of what the application prints when the project's arguments ask it	nothing
	ReportedValue	one expected value out of what the application prints, where the answer is not a set	nothing
Loading	In	whether a page has finished computing, read off the tree against the project's own loading label — and a page it could not walk answers that it did not look	nothing
	Sighted	whether one declared string is showing right now, and whether the look reached the whole window — which is what makes an absence an absence	nothing
CaseRun	Of	one case, run: the loop, the waits, the attempts and the verdict, none of which the case itself carries	nothing
Suite	Run	the cases a selection asked for, run against a window the caller already has, with what it left alone named rather than counted	nothing
	Launch	the same, launching the application under test per fixture — and lending one window to the cases that only read it where the invocation asked for that	nothing
	Undeclared	which steps name an act needing a project key nothing declares — the reading behind the refusal a run makes at its door, split out so a tool can report every one of them where a run stops at the first	nothing
OwnRender	Into	ask the application to render the tree behind one of its windows into a named file, and read back whether it did — the route this block calls its default, which the engine cannot take because a render needs a visual tree and nothing outside that process has one	the in-app half
	PopupInto	ask the application for the tree one named popup is holding — the surface a copy of the screen cannot photograph open and has nothing to photograph closed, so a preview of a flyout nobody has clicked is a picture only the application can take	the in-app half
	ArmedIn	whether an application has put up the window its in-app half declares — the reading the engine already took to decide whether a silence it recorded still stands, and the one this suite used to take again with a walk of its own	nothing
DropShadows	Reading	whether this desk draws the shadow a menu asks for — a system setting, off on a runner tuned for speed, and the fact that turns a case waiting for a shadow into a hole naming it	nothing
	Of	the answer a reading already taken turns into, which is the half a case can drive without switching a setting of the machine off in the middle of a run	nothing
Menu	MenuOwner	which window is working a menu right now, read from the desk's own input state — the fact that tells a tracked popup's owner holding the foreground from an intruder holding it	nothing
	RaisedFrom	the same fact for the kind Windows says nothing about: which window of the menu's own thread holds the desk, which is what a drop-down raised for a tray icon leaves behind	nothing

Where to go next

• The case format — the act field, and the closed list of what a step may name.
• Addressing an element — how a verb is told what to act on.
• The README — the same families in prose, with the reasoning behind each.