As mentioned in my earlier essay: after suffering major internet outage where I live, it's made me realise just how dependent I am and I assume many people are on being online.

I covered how for tools we want things that work installed locally and offline. This also is where your Bullet Journal/paper based systems come in handy, and they're even more robust as they're guarded against power failure too.

This should also apply to anything you want automated that you also want control over locally or at least be able to access.

Autohotkey, AHK, is a free tool that basically just what it's named for. It will automatically run scripts based on a hotkey/shortcut. It's actually more sophisticated than that but for the absolute basics and how it was originally intended it's worth keeping that in mind.

Power Automate. The closest you will find to a full modern no code tool for automation on Windows comes from Microsoft themselves.

In the same way that Apple had Automator, which is now being replaced and eventually phased out with Shortcuts for Mac, the Windows nearest equivalent is Power Automate Desktop.

Where we can build a hybrid automation system ourselves with some online service and combining with TriggerCMD and Autohotkey, Microsoft Power Automate is basically an all in one solution for this. If you use Microsoft apps and Office apps extensively then you really should look at the possibilities with this. The key to offline automation here is the desktop app part of the automation solution.