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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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!
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.
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! :)
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.
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.