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Show HN: A Poor Man's Apple Intelligence

by nathan-barry on 5/20/25, 3:28 PM with 2 comments

I built a poor man’s Apple Intelligence. Send messages, emails, call people, create/read reminders, calendar events, alarms, contacts, and more through Claude!

Apple previously took down an ad (More Personalized Siri [1]) when the Siri AI update was delayed. One thing this project allows is Claude can now do the exact same example shown in the ad successfully.

The project uses Apple shortcuts to give Claude the ability to text, call, email, read/create calendar events, alarms, reminders, etc. It works by allowing Claude to pass in text into the shortcuts app (ex `echo "func_name, arg1, arg2, arg3" > shortcuts run shortcut`) which is then parsed within the shortcut.

It has one large shortcut consisting of a list of if statements that run if the action matches with the function name and uses the arguments to complete the action. Some actions (like listContacts or listPastCalendarEvents) print to stdout which Claude can use as context for future actions. One can easily add new actions to the shortcut as well.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/03/10/apple-pulls-iphone-16-a...

  • by SamosaGuru on 5/20/25, 4:04 PM

    Privacy concerns aside, could it draw from my messages to get plans for the day or the future? Would be super cool if my friend messaged me a plan for some weekend, and I can check if I’m free then?