Show HN: Use ChatGPT with Apple Shortcuts

This is a wonderful idea for iOS Shortcuts. Though after the second shortcut - I gave up. The onboarding flow of email > get pdf > click link in pdf > download first shortcut > run first shortcut > first shortcut downloads second shortcut > then a bountiful settings pallete, with an insane amount of settings is just too much.

I think you'd be better off putting the scaffolding into a proper iOS app with AppIntents. This onboarding flow is (forgive me) awful, but I understand why you want it to be this way. I also think with AppStore's recent rejections you can't BYOK either, which really messes with your business model.

Email is open, happy to help you with this - I think it's what we want, just not how we need it.

Btw: I already have a shortcut directly hooked into openAI's endpoint, it's wonderful as is. The other 'modes' I would love to try.

Thank you so much for the feedback! Yes, using Apple Shortcuts exclusively brings a lot of extra (and maybe unnecessary) steps and walls to break through. I knew that from the beginning, but I had to sacrifice convenience to bring my idea to life. But on the other hand, I tried to make the onboarding as clear and easy to follow for every user. That is why is seems like it never ends. But I will improve it for sure. Thank you again! :)

"The next step is to gain access to the PDF containing instructions on how to download and install COPILOT." I stopped right there

The official OpenAI ChatGPT iOS app [1] includes an “Ask ChatGPT” Shortcut action [2]. Is it not simpler to just use that?

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chatgpt/id6448311069

[2] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7993358-chatgpt-ios-app-...

It depends on what you need ChatGPT to do. If you want to just have conversations with it, yes, the official app would be enough. But if you want to give it some task or goal to accomplish, it can't do that. Moreover, it's not directly integrated into the Apple ecosystem, meaning that you will still need to create a separate shortcut that uses their shortcut actions to manage your conversations. And what about the real-time web capabilities? ChatGPT iOS app doesn't have yet. Again, it depends on what you want to accomplish.

What does it look like to use? This desperately needs a demo video! These things live or die based on how smooth they are.

I know. I am working on it! Thank you!

I think features like Google search and web scraping are really important, and you should keep adding them (like ChatGPT's official plugins). I would use Copilot for these features, but otherwise using Actions' built in ChatGPT action with Shortcuts and prompting manually also works, and it's free.

Yes, that is my main goal, to expand its functionality over time the same way as ChatGPT did with plugins.

I use https://elephas.app/ to do this. Comes included in Setapp

The installation process is quite complicated to be honest. I know this is due to shortcuts, but, creating an account, then wait for a link, to get a PDF on mobile, to install it... what a drag.

I really understand that and I apologize for the friction created. This is mainly due to Lemon Squeezy, as I couldn't include there just the link to the installation shortcut. It required an actual file, but that way I also added the initial instructions inside the PDF, along with the link.

The screenshot where you were asking the stock price and recent earnings, didn't actually give you the stock price.

Selling shortcuts is quite cool, I would have thought it wasn’t possible because shortcuts are so slow and limited

For me, to be honest, Apple Shortcuts is an undiscovered treasure. :)

This is awesome! My solution was to build an iMessage interface to ChatGPT so I can use it via Siri.

Thank you so much! Yes, that would be another way, but with limitations - available only in the Messages app. And everything would be handled on the server-side.

After reading the site I'm still not sure what this does. Can you walk me through a few use cases?

Sure. Say you wrote down some ideas in Apple Notes and you want to continue brainstorming or to extract some action items - select the text, activate COPILOT and ask it to do just that. Or, you are viewing a very long article in Safari, but you don't have enough time to read it - tap Share, activate the shortcut and just ask COPILOT to summarize it or to extract the information you need, as the webpage will be automatically passed to it - no need for copy-pasting anything. And the best one that I use most frequently, is the Google search and web browsing, as I don't need to do all these steps any more - open Safari, type the text, look over the search results and browse through webpages to find what I need. I just ask COPILOT for that information and it will do all of that for me. I just watch its progress and wait for the final result.

The image carousel advances way too fast to read the text in the screenshots

Oh, just hover over the carusel and it will pause, for reading.

You shouldn't have to pause the image just to get a basic understanding of what it's showing. If you're interested, yeah, sure, hover and pause to read more, but you can't even tell what it's about at the current speed.

Agreed, and just increased the interval, actually doubled it.

The auto scroll is still really annoying on mobile I recommend just removing auto scroll and let the user navigate the carousel.

Ok, got it, thank you for the feedback!

ok so this runs on apple but talks to openai and continuosly keeps sending data from my phone to openAI? no thanks !!

No, it only sends the data you allow it to, hence your input, or the selected text from an app. Nothing is sent without your permission. I gladly invite you to run it either in Restricted or Debug Mode to have a fully transparent overview of what actions it does.

fyi i get a cloudflare bad gateway error when using icloud hide my email

Ok, thank you for bringing that up! Will investigate.

Why choose the name Copilot when that's already the name for products built by AWS, Microsoft, and GitHub?

Very good question, thank you for asking! :) I felt like there was no better name for it, being like a real companion or copilot in every app I use. So I wanted the name to actually reflect that.

What is your plan if/when a trademark dispute arises? I was never a trademark lawyer, but based on what I know from my adjacent practice, this seems very likely to occur.

Honestly, I am not sure yet, but I will do what is right to do in that case.

If you're going up against MS, I'm sure they'll insist on it!

In all seriousness though, you could end up being liable for diluting their trademark, and if you aren't set up in a corporation, the liability could hit you personally.

I'm not a lawyer anymore, but this is the sort of thing that sets off all kinds of alarms in my head. This looks like a cool project, and it would be unfortunate if it got mired down in legal controversy — especially if that was totally avoidable.

Thank you for the advice, gnicholas! And no, I have absolutely no intention to be in MS's way with their Copilot. If necessary, I will do a rebranding as soon as possible.

Name it Apple Copilot.

Yay, now instead of fighting one giant corporation in court, you're fighting two!

How does it compare to this open source shortcut?

https://github.com/Yue-Yang/ChatGPT-Siri

Federico Viticci's S-GPT has been interesting to try as well. It has integrations for Safari share sheet, Clipboard, Reminders and Calendar, LiveText, Safari and URLs, Quick Look, Files, Finder, Translate, and other export actions, and Music.

https://www.macstories.net/ios/introducing-s-gpt-a-shortcut-...

Yes, and I tried it as well. Honestly, I didn't like the way it was built around keywords as triggers for the actions I wanted to make. I wanted more flexibility, to be able to ask naturally what I want. But he did a very nice work, I took it as an inspiration.

That open-source shortcut seems like a simple chat bot to have conversations with. I wanted COPILOT to be something more than that, but still to be able to use it for simple questions. It actually works like an AI agent so I would give it my goal, or a task, and using the tools provided, it will run autonomously until it completes it. After that, I can still ask follow-up questions or provide feedback, so it will continue to run until I receive a convenient answer. Integrating OpenAI's function-calling feature into an Apple Shortcut is something that I have never seen elsewhere. And just that leads to limitless possibilities of integrations and capabilities. As I said from the beginning, it was such a crazy idea, but I loved it and put all my effort into it. :)

> Now, no matter what app I am using on my iPhone or Mac, the selected text or the current webpage from Safari will be passed automatically to COPILOT. Then I just ask it whatever I need and watch until it reaches the goal autonomously.

Could you please provide details about what privacy and security guarantees you make about user data? This is noticeably absent from the FAQ.

Is Copilot compliant with the GDPR?

Thank you.

Sure, let me explain. First of all, Apple Shortcuts is secure by design due to the way Apple built it. All the actions from a shortcut, any shortcut, are visible to the user. That is why I said the app is open-source. Everything it does is visible, especially when running in Debug Mode, where both the input and output data of the actions are displayed before actually processing that data further. I actually recommend running it first in Debug Mode for a full overview of how it works. Second, Apple Shortcuts always asks for your permission first when any shortcut needs access to any data. So it will never automatically use any data without your consent. Lastly, fully detailed logs for each conversation are stored in iCloud - Shortcuts folder - COPILOT folder, for both full transparency and future reference of old conversations. I hope you understand now that user data is safe. Thank you!

Thanks! Is there any Copilot-operated server involved in any of the features, or are the only servers ever used run by openai.com and google.com? Does all of the decision logic about how to do Google searches run client-side on my phone?

For the autonomous modes, is the "main loop" contained within the shortcut itself, running on my phone, or is there a server involved, sending push notifications down to me from the cloud?

Does Copilot retain any logs of my usage? What about OpenAI, and Google?

Only one type of request will be sent to me, to my licensing server, which validates the license key received after purchase to provide the Premium set of shortcuts or the latest version. So when installing COPILOT or checking for updates, that request sends the license key received after purchase along with the current version installed and returns the links to the Premium version of COPILOT shortcuts or the latest one when an update is required. Any other requests are between your phone, OpenAI and Google. So yes, the "main loop" happens within the shortcut itself, and the current progress notifications are sent from it.