app-intents_skill

Overview

This skill explains how to implement App Intents to expose app functionality to Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight, and Apple Intelligence. It covers core APIs (AppIntent, AppEntity), advanced features (interactive snippets, intent modes), visual intelligence integration, and Spotlight entity indexing. Use it to design voice phrases, index app content, and present rich or interactive Siri results.

How this skill works

The skill walks through defining intents and entities in Swift, adding metadata and parameters, and choosing intent modes (foreground vs background). It explains indexing entities for Spotlight and visual intelligence, creating App Shortcuts, and building interactive snippets or onscreen entities. It highlights required static metadata, query support for entities, and APIs to reindex after data changes.

When to use it

• You want Siri or Shortcuts integration for app features
• You need Spotlight indexing or searchable app content
• You must provide predictable voice phrases via App Shortcuts
• You want interactive Siri results or onscreen entity support
• You need visual intelligence or camera-based search integration

Best practices

• Always supply static title and description for every AppIntent
• Give AppEntity types a default query and display representations
• Match supportedModes to the work: background for silent ops, foreground for UI
• Reindex IndexedEntity types after data mutations with CSSearchableIndex
• Use requestChoice(between:) for presenting user choices and SnippetIntent for interactive results

Example use cases

• Expose a "Toggle Favorite" action that runs silently in background
• Index recipes or notes so they appear in Spotlight and Siri search
• Create App Shortcuts with natural voice phrases using AppShortcutsProvider
• Show an interactive snippet with buttons to confirm or continue an operation
• Support visual intelligence camera searches using IntentValueQuery and semantic descriptors