Apple opens Siri AI to any developer, and skills are coming to the iPhone
The biggest agent distribution surface on Earth just opened its beta. Starting Tuesday with the iOS, iPadOS, macOS and visionOS 27.3 betas, a Developer Preview lets any developer plug an app into Siri AI through App Intents. A user asks in their own words, and Siri AI runs the custom action you built, from checking a delivery to placing an order.
Two details make this more than a Siri refresh. Apple is introducing skills, which teach Siri AI how to combine several actions into one experience. So the same idea that spread through coding agents now has an Apple flavor. And Siri AI can surface any entity in the Spotlight semantic index, not only the ones that fit an existing schema, which removes the old limitation where your app had to look like a category Apple planned for. Apple's own apps are the reference set: Calendar, Files, Finder, Mail, Maps, Messages, Notes, Safari, Shortcuts and more.
Compare it with the rest of the ecosystem and the choice stands out. Everyone else is converging on MCP as the way an agent reaches an app, and Apple did say on October 27 that Keynote, Pages and Numbers get MCP support, so external agents can read content, edit and run automated actions in them. But for its own assistant reaching third-party apps, the route is App Intents. Inbound agents get the open protocol and Siri gets the native one. If you ship an app, you may end up maintaining both.
Keep the timing in mind. This is a preview. It ships to customers in a few months, App Store submission opens in the spring, and Apple says terms and usage policies come later, which is exactly where the interesting fights will be, like who gets surfaced when someone says order me dinner. Siri AI is also unavailable in the EU on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS for now, and server-side usage has daily limits.
The real question for builders is whether being invoked by Siri becomes the new App Store ranking. Apple is pitching this as new ways to reach customers, in those words. Whoever controls the assistant controls the default, and that default has been worth a lot of money before.
Apple: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=gdk2umrf Docs: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/siri-ai-developer-preview iWork MCP: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/10/apple-creator-studio-adds-powerful-new-ai-features-and-even-more-creative-tools/
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Two details make this more than a Siri refresh. Apple is introducing skills, which teach Siri AI how to combine several actions into one experience. So the same idea that spread through coding agents now has an Apple flavor. And Siri AI can surface any entity in the Spotlight semantic index, not only the ones that fit an existing schema, which removes the old limitation where your app had to look like a category Apple planned for. Apple's own apps are the reference set: Calendar, Files, Finder, Mail, Maps, Messages, Notes, Safari, Shortcuts and more.
Compare it with the rest of the ecosystem and the choice stands out. Everyone else is converging on MCP as the way an agent reaches an app, and Apple did say on October 27 that Keynote, Pages and Numbers get MCP support, so external agents can read content, edit and run automated actions in them. But for its own assistant reaching third-party apps, the route is App Intents. Inbound agents get the open protocol and Siri gets the native one. If you ship an app, you may end up maintaining both.
Keep the timing in mind. This is a preview. It ships to customers in a few months, App Store submission opens in the spring, and Apple says terms and usage policies come later, which is exactly where the interesting fights will be, like who gets surfaced when someone says order me dinner. Siri AI is also unavailable in the EU on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS for now, and server-side usage has daily limits.
The real question for builders is whether being invoked by Siri becomes the new App Store ranking. Apple is pitching this as new ways to reach customers, in those words. Whoever controls the assistant controls the default, and that default has been worth a lot of money before.
Apple: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=gdk2umrf Docs: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/siri-ai-developer-preview iWork MCP: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/10/apple-creator-studio-adds-powerful-new-ai-features-and-even-more-creative-tools/
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