1. A computer program product for generating output to control a target program executing on a target computer, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therein that executes to perform operations, the operations comprising: providing an automation object including a plurality of expressions and corresponding responses organized into job groups, wherein at least one of the responses includes a response variable; providing a configuration object providing machine specific values for the response variables in the responses for the target computer; generating compiled responses by replacing the response variables in the responses with the machine specific values for the response variables provided in the configuration object for the target computer on which the target program will execute; processing the expressions in the automation object to provide compiled responses for expressions received from the executing target program; terminating the processing of one of the job groups being processed in response to determining that one of the expressions in the job group being processed has not been found to match a received expression within a timeout period; and processing another of the job groups in the automation object in response to the timeout period expiring.