typo in title: "Shortuct" instead of "Shortcut" - is this how we're gonna distinguish from llm? /s
Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
41–50 of 82 posts
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#42Cool! As a professional programmer few things consistently succeed in making me feel inept like trying to build an Apple Shortcut
I felt really smart after I made a fancy Shortcut that did complex playlist generation based on rules and whatnots. Of course, adding music to a playlist broke a couple of updates down the line and, as far as I'm aware, still doesn't work properly several years later. (I moved to Marvis Pro[0] because it has reasonably complex smart playlists that just about mimic what I was doing with my generator except they're tra…
This is what prevents me from putting any effort in to shortcuts. I have zero confidence in Apple respecting my time by committing to compatibility or even just not breaking things. The constant feature churn from new PM’s tearing down Chesterton’s fence to make way for their own career ambitions makes Apple user hostile.
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#43I'm guessing that if Apple can get it right with the next LLM based Siri, generating or editing Shortcuts may get easier anyway.
It does seem like the logical automation platform to prepare repeatable tasks that the end user might want to do.
The permissions and secure app integration models are all there, and it’s reasonably stable.
It was always puzzling why there was never an exportable scripting language, just shareable links. I think I ended up sharing screen shots with Claude last time I wanted to troubleshoot something.
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#44I 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.
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#45Love 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
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#46I'm guessing that if Apple can get it right with the next LLM based Siri, generating or editing Shortcuts may get easier anyway.
The biggest problem IMO is the loooooooong animation delay built into every UI interaction. It's so hard to get into a flow state or even maintain a train of thought when you have to wait for everything on the screen to stop sliding, wiggling, wobbling, jiggling, refracting, distorting, and flashing.
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#47Still confused on why there is no social component of this? What is the best place to find examples of actual useful Apple Shortcuts?
A lot of examples from Federico Viticci / MacStories (scroll down past the Automation Academy ad)
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#48What can you do on a Mac with Shortcuts vs AppleScript vs Hammerspoon?
[flagged]
> If you care about serious Mac automation, you'll probably mix them and curse each one for a different reason.
I do. I completely left all of the automation options. I just use Swift and the private macOS APIs. Though, I will admit that there are still some things that Shortcuts can do that I have not found a to hack around in Swift. The difference is likely due to App Intents, which is big lame.
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#49I'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…
Cool to hear Claude was able to learn it. I was planning on leveraging it in a future version of this project I was hacking on that lets you execute shortcut actions as tools (without creating actual shortcuts): https://tarq.net/posts/action-relay-shortcut-actions-mcp/
Re: Cherri – programming language that compiles to an Apple Shortuct
#50I'm guessing that if Apple can get it right with the next LLM based Siri, generating or editing Shortcuts may get easier anyway.
The biggest problem IMO is the loooooooong animation delay built into every UI interaction. It's so hard to get into a flow state or even maintain a train of thought when you have to wait for everything on the screen to stop sliding, wiggling, wobbling, jiggling, refracting, distorting, and flashing.
I’m guessing you might know already, but just in case you don’t, “reduce motion” in the accessibility settings menu is essential to productivity and sanity.