- I've just used this extensively to build 200 Shortcuts for my event-based automation app on macOS [0], because some actions you simply can't do without Shortcuts: changing Focus Mode, toggling Accessibility functions like Color Filters, accessing the Private Cloud Compute model etc.
I also wrote about how Claude was able to basically learn the language from scratch and write those fully compilable Shortcuts for me [1] because it was mind boggling to me that an LLM can do that. Curiously, this is becoming more and more normal in my mind.
[0] https://lowtechguys.com/crank
[1] https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/how-good-is-claude-really/#che...
by lemontheme
4 subcomments
- Cool! As a professional programmer few things consistently succeed in making me feel inept like trying to build an Apple Shortcut
- Oh boy!
Creating/maintaining Shortcuts is such a pain!
Having to do it on a small iPhone screen with a touchscreen keyboard, through a no-code interface...
I want an actual text editor, I want to version things with git...
It feels like with Cherri I'll finally be able to actually do things!
Thanks!
by RationPhantoms
4 subcomments
- Still confused on why there is no social component of this? What is the best place to find examples of actual useful Apple Shortcuts?
by wwalexander
1 subcomments
- I take it this only supports Apple’s built-in actions, and doesn’t plug into the broader AppIntents system? AppIntents includes a packaging concept, would be cool to see if this could use third-party AppIntents in a similar way to how scientific Python uses C modules for performance critical sections.
- What can you do on a Mac with Shortcuts vs AppleScript vs Hammerspoon?
- Love this approach of compiling a readable language to a platform-specific format. Same pattern works well for i18n. Write in one language, compile/translate to the target formats automatically.
The developer experience of writing real code instead of clicking through a GUI (Shortcuts app in this case) is always the right bet for power users
- Could you explain more about how the signing setup works?
(That's what held me back most for spending more effort on shortcuts.)
- Looks quite cool and I'd like to give a try. What is the main use case for compiling code to shortcuts? I ask because I'm working on a tool[0] that in a way does the opposite.
[0] https://breadboards.io
- I wish Apple hadn’t gone with shortcuts. Instead I wish they’d given us a proper sdk for iOS and macOS as a Python module.
Python is so easy to pick up they could have given it a low code drag and drop front end but for us who can code why not a proper language ?
by threecheese
3 subcomments
- I’m interested to understand how this is different than Jelly; they seem to be similar. Same for Scriptable. I’ve been looking at this to hand over to Claude to build Shortcuts, something which has a terrible development experience.
- I built a small app to follow my infant son's feedings and diaper changes. Simply used the shortcuts get content of url to call the API rest endpoints. This is much better !
- Of course what we need is a native IDE that runs on an iPhone and produces executable scripts…
by wateralien
2 subcomments
- I'm guessing that if Apple can get it right with the next LLM based Siri, generating or editing Shortcuts may get easier anyway.
by swiftcoder
1 subcomments
- > Cherri (pronounced cherry)
Why would you spell it like that if you don't want me to pronounce it chéri/sherry?
by pseudosavant
0 subcomment
- This makes me want to spend some time with Codex just to figure out something fun to do with Shortcuts!
by _doctor_love
0 subcomment
- Very cool! IMHO Apple Shortcuts will finally get the love they're due in the age of AI.
- "shortuct"
- whither AppleScript?
by aaronbrethorst
1 subcomments
- Adjacently, does anyone know of a Terraform-like syntax for creating GitHub Actions YML files?
by xihe-forge
0 subcomment
- [dead]
- typo in title: "Shortuct" instead of "Shortcut" - is this how we're gonna distinguish from llm? /s
- Is this vibe coded? The README at least looks very LLM-ish.
- While it's not in quite the same product category, a name change might be in order; this is uncomfortably close to CHERI (cf. https://cheri-alliance.org/).
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