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In the Settings ▸ Agents tab of a Bookmarkshelf, you can create and configure agents which, when triggered, dispatch a Worker process to perform a series of Commands on the Bookmarkshelf.
Before discussing the details, we’ll show how to configure the most commonly desired Agent: One that will keep Safari bookmarks sorted. To do that, use the Bookmarks Changed Trigger on Safari, and configure Commands to Import, Sort, Export and Save. (Actually the Save step is optional but normally it is desirable to update the Bookmarkshelf.)
To create an Agent, click the 
button next in the top table in the Settings ▸ Agents tab.
An Agent will be created. If desired, edit its Description.
Your newly-created agent will be endowed with a single default Trigger, and some default Commands. These may or may not be the Trigger and Commands that you want want. Configure Triggers and Commands for your new agent, as described in the following sections…
Note that Triggers and Commands are properties of a particular Agent. If your Bookmarkshelf has more than one Agent, the Triggers and Commands shown in the two lower tables are properties of the Agent which is selected in the upper table.
Because BookMacster Agents may be active in different Bookmarkshelf documents, it may at times be helpful to find the documents which have active agents. BookMacster provides that capability with the File ▸ Open Active Agents menu item:
If you would like to temporarily deactivate an Agent, un-check the box in its Active column. To remove an Agent permanently, select it and click the 
button next in the top table in the Settings ▸ Agents tab. In either case, then Save the Bookmarkshelf.
BookMacster’s Agents are based on the launchd facility of Mac OS X. An BookMacster Agent is implemented by one or more launchd agents, which are file(s) in the directory
~/Library/LaunchAgents/
The launchd agent files are either trigger files, or a special quit watch file.
A trigger file implements a single Trigger in a single Agent, and has a name of the form
com.sheepsystems.BookMacster.XXX…XX.YYY.ZZZ.plist
The part with all the XXXs is the unique identifier of the Bookmarkshelf on whose behalf it acts. The YYY is three decimal digits saying which agent in the Bookmarkshelf this launchd agent is acting for, and the ZZZ is similarly three decimal digits saying which trigger it implements. The YYY and ZZZ begin with 000 for the first agent or trigger in the table, 001 for the second, etc.
The special quit watch file has a name of the form
com.sheepsystems.BookMacster.QuatchRunner.plist
This special file is installed whenever you save a Bookmarkshelf whose Agents contain one or more triggers that are of the browser quit trigger type. Its job is to keep running a little process which watches for browser apps to quit (because, unfortunately, launchd does not provide this service). The process it keeps running is an instance of BookMacster-Quatch which is included in the BookMacster application package.
This is a section of background technical information which is not needed for ordinary usage.
BookMacster remembers the documents in which you have set Agents. Each time you launch BookMacster, in the background, it runs through each of these and makes sure that they exist, are not in your Trash, and have not been replaced by a Dropbox update. If any of these tests fail, BookMacster removes any of their Agents. The same thing happens if an Agent cannot find its document when it tries to run.
Also, when the last Bookmarkshelf which had an Agent with a browser quit trigger type is saved without such a trigger, the quit watch file is removed and the BookMacster-Quatch process is terminated. In other words, BookMacster-Quatch only runs if one or more Bookmarkshelves need it.
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