AI Chat

The AI Chat is an optional, powerful way to work with Shortcuts Toolbox. Many everyday tasks — running shortcuts, scheduling, and generating reports — can be done just by asking, in plain English. The app’s core management features work fully on their own; AI simply makes them faster.

Think of the AI as your personal automation assistant. It knows about all your shortcuts, understands scheduling, can generate reports and visualizations, and orchestrates complex multi-step workflows — all through natural conversation. You stay in control of what the AI can access and execute.

AI Chat interface showing a conversation about running shortcuts

What you can do through chat

Run any shortcut

Just say “Run my Morning Routine shortcut” or “Execute the backup script with input ‘documents’”. The AI handles parameters and shows you the results.

Schedule anything

“Run this every weekday at 9am”, “Remind me to check backups in 2 hours”, or “Schedule a weekly report every Monday”. Natural language scheduling — no cron syntax required.

Find & explore shortcuts

“What shortcuts do I have for photos?”, “Show me all shortcuts in my Work folder”, or “Which shortcuts use the Calendar app?”. The AI helps you discover and understand your library.

Generate reports & dashboards

Ask for summaries or formatted output. “List all my shortcuts organized by folder” or “Create a summary of my scheduled tasks”. The AI can render rich HTML output inline.

Analyze dependencies

“What shortcuts does Morning Routine call?”, “Show me orphaned shortcuts”, or “Which shortcuts would break if I delete this one?”. Understand your shortcut ecosystem with dependency graphs.

Chain multiple actions

“First run the cleanup script, then if it succeeds, run the backup, and finally send me a notification”. The AI orchestrates complex workflows in a single conversation.

Use external MCP tools

If you’ve connected external MCP servers, the AI can use those tools too. “Use the weather service to check tomorrow’s forecast” or combine tools from multiple sources.

Get help & explanations

“Explain what my Backup shortcut does step by step”, “How do I set up scheduling?”, or “What’s the difference between AI Tasks and chat?”. The AI is your built-in documentation.

Example conversations

You
“Fetch my reminders and plot them by impact vs effort on a mobile-friendly chart”
AI
I’ll run your Get Reminders shortcut and generate an HTML quadrant chart... Done! Your reminders are now visualized by priority, styled with clean, modern CSS.
You
“Get my calendar for the next week and create a time-blocking summary with gaps highlighted”
AI
Running Calendar Overview... You have 14 events this week. I’ve created an HTML dashboard showing your schedule with 3 gaps of 2+ hours highlighted in green — perfect for deep work.
You
“Every morning at 8am, check my calendar and send me a Pushcut notification with today’s first meeting”
AI
I’ve scheduled a daily AI task for 8:00 AM that will fetch your calendar and send a notification with your first meeting. You’ll get alerts like “9:30 AM: Team Standup in Conference Room B”.

When you ask the AI to build something that should keep refreshing — a daily dashboard, a triage board — it can turn the conversation into a live, scheduled app backed by a generation-graph workflow.

Multi-provider support

Choose your preferred AI model for each conversation. Shortcuts Toolbox supports OpenAI (GPT-4o, GPT-4, etc.), Anthropic (Claude), and Google (Gemini). Switch models anytime — different models may work better for different tasks.

Conversation history

All your conversations are saved. Pick up where you left off and reference past discussions anytime. The AI maintains context within each conversation, so you can have extended back-and-forth discussions.

Available chat tools

The AI has access to these tools when chatting with you:

Shortcut discovery & execution

list_enabled_shortcuts

Lists all shortcuts available for execution, with names, folders, and descriptions.

run_enabled_shortcut

Execute a specific shortcut by name, optionally passing input parameters.

list_all_shortcuts

List all shortcuts in the system (not hidden from AI), optionally filtered by folder.

list_shortcut_folders

List all folders that contain shortcuts.

get_shortcut_details

Get detailed metadata about a shortcut including its actions and dependencies.

get_shortcut_dependency_graph

Display the dependency graph showing what other shortcuts it calls and which call it.

AI & automation

perform_task

Perform an AI-powered task using available shortcuts and tools to accomplish a goal.

create_html_page

Create rich HTML reports, dashboards, or visualizations displayed inline in the chat.

Scheduling

list_scheduled_jobs

List all scheduled jobs with their status, timing, and metadata.

request_schedule_shortcut

Schedule a shortcut to run at a specific time, interval, or with a delay.

request_schedule_ai_task

Schedule an AI task to run automatically on a schedule.

request_manage_scheduled_job

Pause, resume, cancel, or immediately run an existing scheduled job.

Settings & maintenance

get_shortcut_ai_settings

Get the current AI settings for a shortcut (visibility, executability, privacy).

request_update_shortcut_ai_settings

Update AI settings for a shortcut (enable/disable, privacy settings).

refresh_shortcut_metadata

Refresh cached metadata when you’ve edited a shortcut in Apple Shortcuts.

AI controls

You control exactly what the AI can see and do. For each shortcut, configure:

  • Visible to AI — Whether the AI knows this shortcut exists
  • Executable by AI — Whether the AI is allowed to run this shortcut
  • Private contents — Whether to hide the shortcut’s internal actions from the AI

This gives you fine-grained control over privacy and what automations the AI can help with.

Related docs

AI Tasks

Schedule natural-language tasks the AI carries out for you.

AI Apps & Templates

Turn shortcuts into live, scheduled webpages from reusable templates.

Workflows

How an app gathers and shapes its data, step by step, before it renders.

Example Apps

See real apps the AI built, from weather reports to task matrices.