¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

Previously: Amphetamine: Keep awake.

The previous setup would turn my external monitor off upon:

tell application "Amphetamine" to start new session

I needed to modify it to issue that command only when the session is not yet active.

Via Apple Stack Exchange I noticed I could open the Script Editor.app, then File > Open Dictionary..., then select Amphetamine.app.

This would open a new window with a list of all available AppleScript commands to my disposal.

I quickly spotted one called session is active:

Returns boolean — true or false — indicating whether there is an active session

…that’s exactly what I needed!

Now I just needed to combine if + session is active + start a new session.

I don’t know AppleScript, and I didn’t intend to specialize on it now. In the old days, I would have used a search engine and/or consulted a Stack Exchange website to figure out what is the if syntax. Or maybe even have introspected the AppleScript documentation / manual.

But we’re in 2025.

I write llm applescript if "session is active" tell application to start new session in Chrome. llm is aliased to https://chatgpt.com/?hints=search&ref=ext&q=%s. ChatGPT Search happily tells me what the correct syntax is:

tell application "Amphetamine"
    if not (session is active) then
        start new session
    end if
end tell

I follow up with inline in osascript, which results in:

osascript -e 'tell application "Amphetamine" to if not (session is active) then start new session'

Exactly what I was looking for.

Moments later there’s a new commit in my corp dotfiles:

% git show b306e31597b63007bb8c3aadb56340cdb6f52703
commit b306e31597b63007bb8c3aadb56340cdb6f52703
Author: Thiago Perrotta <{email redacted}>
Date:   Tue Apr 1 13:31:33 2025 +0200

    better amphetamine

diff --git profile/.profile.d/functions_corp.sh profile/.profile.d/functions_corp.sh
index e58333a..365c176 100644
--- profile/.profile.d/functions_corp.sh
+++ profile/.profile.d/functions_corp.sh
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ redacted_login() {
 # Run at the start of the work day
 prodaccess() {
        echo "--> Amphetamine"
-       osascript -e 'tell application "Amphetamine" to start new session'
+       osascript -e 'tell application "Amphetamine" to if not (session is active) then start new session'