Chemical reactions that reliably join two molecular fragments together (crosscouplings) are essential to the discovery and following manufacture of high-value materials like pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. 1,2 In this area, the introduction of amines onto functionalised aromatics at specific and pre-determined positions (ortho vs meta vs para) is currently a prerogative of transition metal-catalysed processes and requires halogen/boron-containing substrates. 3-6 The introduction of these groups around the aromatic unit is dictated by the intrinsic reactivity profile of the method (e.g. electrophilic halogenation, C-H borylation) so selective targeting of all possible positions is often not possible. Here we report a noncanonical cross-coupling approach for the programmable construction of anilines on demand, exploiting saturated cyclohexanones as aryl electrophile surrogates. The condensation between amines and carbonyls, a process extensively used by Nature and (bio)organic chemists, 7 is the enabling feature that ensures a predetermined and site-selective carbon-nitrogen bond formation, while a synergistic photoredox and cobalt catalytic system is simultaneously employed to progressively desaturate the cyclohexene ring en route to the aniline. As functionalised cyclohexanones are readily accessible with complete regiocontrol by well-established carbonyl chemistry, this approach offers a solution to bypass some of the frequent selectivity issues of aromatic chemistry. The utility of this novel C-N coupling protocol was demonstrated by the preparation of commercial medicines and the late-stage amination-aromatization of natural products, steroids and terpene feedstocks.Innovations in synthetic chemistry are integral to the discovery and production of highvalue materials and medicines, and as a result, the well-being of society. In particular, chemical transformations able to couple together complex and functionalized building blocks in a site-selective and programmable manner are fundamental to downstream access to increasingly complex molecules. Within the realm of cross-coupling reactions, processes leading to the construction of C-N bonds across aromatic systems have played a fundamental role in assembling anilines, key structural elements of drugs, agrochemicals and materials. [8][9][10] Currently, the most reliable way to selectively introduce amines into specific positions on functionalised aromatics (ortho vs meta vs para), is to use palladium-or coppercatalysed strategies. 11 For these processes to work, the aromatic coupling partner needs to be pre-equipped with a (pseudo)halide (Buchwald-Hartwig 4,12 and Ullmann 6 crosscouplings) or a boronic acid (Chan-Lam cross-coupling 5 ) in order to generate arylpalladium/copper species that, after amine coordination and reductive elimination,