Turn Your AI Assistant into a macOS Automation Controller

If you've built useful shortcuts in macOS but wish you could trigger them conversationally through Claude or other AI assistants, this MCP server bridges that gap perfectly. Instead of manually running shortcuts or remembering their exact names, you can just ask your AI to handle it.

What This Solves

You know those shortcuts you've created for common tasks—grabbing your daily schedule, processing screenshots, managing files, or controlling smart home devices? They sit there waiting for manual activation when they could be triggered intelligently based on conversation context.

This MCP server lets Claude (and other MCP-compatible assistants) discover and run your shortcuts with natural language commands. Ask "get my word of the day" and it runs your Word of the Day shortcut. Say "process this image" and it can trigger your custom image processing automation.

Why This Matters for Your Workflow

Context-Aware Automation: Your AI assistant can now trigger the right shortcut based on what you're discussing. Working on a presentation? It can run your "Export Slides" shortcut. Reviewing data? It triggers your "Generate Report" automation.

Zero Friction Access: No more context switching to find and run shortcuts manually. Your automations become part of natural conversation flow.

Safe Boundaries: You control which shortcuts exist and what they do. The AI can only trigger existing shortcuts—it can't create new system access or run arbitrary commands.

Real-World Applications

Content Creation Workflows: Ask Claude to "optimize this image for web" and have it trigger a shortcut that resizes, compresses, and saves to your assets folder.

Data Processing: "Parse this CSV and create a summary" becomes a single conversational request that runs your custom data analysis shortcut.

System Management: "Clean up my downloads folder" or "backup my current project" happen through natural conversation rather than manual shortcut hunting.

Smart Home Integration: Since Shortcuts connects to HomeKit, you can ask your AI to "set the office lighting for video calls" or "turn on focus mode" and have it control your entire environment.

Quick Setup

The server installs in minutes with npm and requires minimal configuration:

npx mcp-server-apple-shortcuts

Add it to your Claude Desktop config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apple-shortcuts": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-server-apple-shortcuts"]
    }
  }
}

That's it. Claude can now see and run any shortcuts you've created.

Integration Pattern

The beauty is in how seamlessly this fits existing development workflows. You're probably already using shortcuts for repetitive tasks. Now those same automations become available during AI conversations about your work.

Instead of building complex integrations or learning new automation tools, you extend the shortcuts you've already created. Your AI assistant becomes a natural language interface to your existing macOS automation setup.

The server handles the bridge between conversational AI and system-level shortcuts while keeping everything sandboxed within Apple's shortcuts environment. You maintain full control over what automations exist and how they function.

For developers who've invested time in macOS shortcuts but want them accessible through AI conversation, this server eliminates the friction between thinking about a task and having your system handle it automatically.