Apple has opened Siri AI to any iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS app. No entitlement request. No schema conformance. The iOS 27.3 beta, seeded November 3, ships a developer preview that lets any Swift app expose custom actions to Siri through App Intents and define multi-step workflows using a SKILL.md file. Public App Store submissions open in spring 2027. The gatekeeping is over — the work starts now.
What Actually Changed #
Until now, deep Siri integration required Apple’s blessing. Developers had to conform to predefined schemas — messaging, payments, ride-booking, a handful of others. Build a niche tool, a developer utility, or a fitness tracker outside Apple’s schema list and Siri couldn’t touch it. The November preview scraps that model. Any App Intent you expose is now fair game for Siri AI, without approval or entitlement, as long as you’re running the iOS 27.3 beta on a development-signed build or internal TestFlight.
App Intents: What You’re Actually Writing #
App Intents are Swift types conforming to the AppIntent protocol. The setup is minimal: a localized title, optional @Parameter values Siri can fill conversationally, and a perform() method that runs your logic and returns a result. Here’s the pattern:
struct BookmarkPageIntent: AppIntent {
static var title: LocalizedStringResource = "Bookmark Current Page"
@Parameter(title: "Note")
var note: String?
func perform() async throws -> some IntentResult {
// your app logic here
return .result(dialog: "Page bookmarked.")
}
}
Xcode collects the intent metadata at build time and registers it with the system. Siri, Shortcuts, and Spotlight all pick it up automatically. The 2026 addition is the View Annotations API: you can link views to entities so Siri understands on-screen context — commands like “send that to Lisa” pointing at whatever’s visible. It’s the most powerful new capability and the most technically involved to implement.
SKILL.md: Chaining Intents Into Workflows #
Skills are the multi-step layer. Add a .skillsbundle folder to your Xcode target, populate it with individual SKILL.md files, and Siri gains guidance on how to chain your intents together. The format is minimal: YAML frontmatter with a name and description, and a Markdown body describing the workflow logic — which intent takes precedence, when to ask for clarification, what to avoid.
If the format looks familiar, it should. SKILL.md is a subset of the agentskills.io specification — the same format Claude Code uses for its skills system. Apple adopting it is a quiet signal that markdown-based agent skills are converging into a cross-platform standard.
A skill is advice, not a program. Siri AI reads your SKILL.md as guidance, not an execution script. It may ignore the order you specified or skip intents it judges unnecessary.
If you need deterministic multi-step behavior, skills won’t give you that. Plan for Siri to exercise judgment over your instructions.
New Xcode Tooling #
Two new tools shipped alongside the preview. The Siri Integration Advisor runs static analysis on your App Intents code and flags improvements — missing descriptions, poorly named parameters, intents Siri is likely to misclassify. The Siri Evaluations framework lets you write multi-turn test scenarios in code: assert which intents fire, which entities resolve, which skills Siri loaded for a given input. Both are beta-quality, but they lower the bar for getting integration right before the spring submission window opens. Apple’s WWDC26 session 343 covers both in depth.
What You Can’t Do Yet #
The EU situation is straightforward: Siri AI is blocked on iOS and iPadOS in the European Union due to ongoing Digital Markets Act disputes. Apple hasn’t announced a resolution date. EU developers on Mac or Apple Vision Pro can still participate; everyone else waits.
Beyond the EU: App Store submissions open in spring 2027, not now. External TestFlight is out for this preview — only internal testers. Siri AI is unavailable for under-13 accounts. And Apple hasn’t published usage limits for server-side Siri features, which matters if you’re planning high-volume integrations.
What to Do Now #
If you have an iOS or macOS app, grab the iOS 27.3 beta from Apple’s developer portal and run Xcode’s Siri Integration Advisor against your existing App Intents. If you haven’t touched App Intents yet, the App Intents framework documentation is the starting point. For a deeper look at SKILL.md, the DEV Community has a solid technical walkthrough on SKILL.md files, and Mango Developer has a step-by-step preparation guide.
The integration window is real and the tooling is here. The spring App Store deadline gives you roughly four months to build and test before this hits users.