Siri can now take actions inside any app. What to decide before App Store submissions open in spring

Siri can now run the things your app does

Here's the short version for anyone who owns an iPhone app. On November 3, Apple opened Siri AI to all developers as a preview alongside the 27.3 betas. Apple says any app can now "bring its content and actions directly into Siri AI by using App Intents."

In plain terms, a customer can ask Siri for something in their own words and Siri carries out an action inside your app, without the customer opening it first. Apple's own examples are ordinary ones: "from checking a delivery to booking a reservation to placing an order."

That's a different kind of request from the old Siri shortcuts most apps never bothered with. Siri now draws on what Apple calls personal context understanding and onscreen awareness, so it can work out which order, which booking, or which item the person means. Your app's job is to tell Siri what it can do, clearly enough that Siri picks the right action.

You probably have questions. These are the ones we'd expect an owner to ask this week, with the answers the published material supports so far.

Do we have to do anything right now?

Not urgently, but this is a good month to plan. Apple's timeline is in its own words: the preview gives "early access before first shipping to customers in a few months; and with submission to the App Store opening up in the spring."

So customers won't see third-party Siri actions today. During the preview, according to this developer write-up of Apple's docs, it works in development-signed builds and for internal TestFlight testers only. External testers and App Store users don't get it yet, and Apple says the API and Siri behavior may change.

That leaves a window of a few months to decide which actions you want Siri to handle, build them, and test them with your own team before the first App Store submissions open. Apps that are ready in spring will be the ones customers find working on day one. Apple also says it will follow up with "more details about the terms and usage policies," so leave room in the plan for that.

If you also have an Android app, this lines up with a change on the Google side. We wrote about Google Play's new rule for how apps describe themselves to AI agents earlier today. The two platforms are asking for very similar work.

What does the work actually look like?

Less than you might fear, if your app already uses App Intents. The docs say you don't need a new entitlement or a separate developer program. Your developers mark an existing intent so Siri can call it as a tool, using one macro, @AppIntent(.tool).

The part that takes thought is the wording. Siri uses each intent's title and description to tell your actions apart, and every parameter needs a title and description too. The dev.to write-up puts it well: "Those strings are your tool schema now, so write them for a model, not for a settings screen."

That's a product decision as much as a coding one. "Reorder" means one thing to your team and something vaguer to a model reading it cold. An action called "Add to cart" with the description "Adds a product to the shopping cart" is clear. An action called Quick action 2 is not.

For requests that need more than one step, Apple added app skills. These are short instruction files that explain how to combine several of your actions, like finding a past order and adding each item to the cart again. Apple also says Siri can now surface any entity in the Spotlight semantic index, so the things your app already makes searchable become things Siri can find and act on.

And customers don't always have to say your app's name. The Verge reports that, per Apple's documentation, people won't need to mention an app "while it's in the foreground, during a Live Activity, or in a conversation with Siri AI about the app." Apple's example is someone changing their ride pickup address while the ride app's Live Activity is on screen.

Which of our actions should Siri get first?

Not all of them. Start with the requests customers already make in a hurry, usually with their hands full. Those are the ones where a spoken request beats opening the app.

A good first list is short. Checking status (where's my order, when's my appointment) is low risk and high value. Simple changes that are easy to undo, like moving a pickup time or adding a note, come next. Anything that spends money, sends something to another person, or can't be reversed should come later and with a confirmation step.

Sort your candidate actions by two questions. How often do customers ask for this? And how bad is it if Siri picks the wrong item or the wrong amount? Frequent and harmless goes first. Rare and costly can wait until you've watched the preview behave with your own team.

Is it safe to let Siri act inside our app?

It can be, but the safety has to live in your code, not in your instructions to Siri. Apple is direct about this: "You can't use app skills to enforce deterministic behavior," and Siri doesn't run a skill's listed steps in a fixed order. If an action must be protected, the write-up says, protect it in code.

The App Intents guide gives your developers three settings to work with. You can require authentication on an entity or a single property, for example asking for Face ID before Siri reads out an account balance. You can set a policy on an intent that returns sensitive data. And you can mark a property as internal, so it stays inside your app and Siri never reads it.

One detail is worth repeating to whoever builds this. Entities don't require authentication unless you set a policy. If your team marks older intents as Siri tools, those intents were written before a model could call them, so review what each one exposes first.

Treat the preview period as your chance to try the awkward requests on purpose: the vague ones, the ones that name the wrong item, the ones that should stop and ask before paying.

Put this into practice

Before the end of the month, write down the five things customers most often open your app to do. For each one, decide whether Siri should handle it, what the action should be called in plain words, and whether it needs a confirmation or Face ID. That one page is the brief your developers need, and it's the same thinking Google is now asking for on Android.

If you'd like help, our mobile application development team can turn that list into App Intents with clear descriptions and the right authentication, and test them through the preview before App Store submissions open. When the actions involve agents working across several steps, our AI applications and agents work covers the design. Tell us what your app does and we'll start with the requests your customers make most.

Related work: Spin:Market.