Shortcuts Playground A MacStories project v1.0
Free & open source

Describe it.
Build it.
Run it.

Turn plain English into real Apple Shortcuts — from inside Claude Code or Codex. No drag-and-drop. No action hunting. Just a sentence and a working .shortcut file in your hands.

Get the plugin → Learn More ↗
Shortcuts Playground app icon
claude code · /shortcuts-playground:build Demo
You type
“save where i parked now, then later guide me back to my car”
{ build model · opus 4.6 reasoning · high
→
You get
ParkedCar 7 actions · 2 variables · 1.8s build
real ✓
1 Get Current Location location
2 Save to Parked Car variable variable
3 If later, open in Maps flow
4 Show Walking Directions maps
01 — Capabilities

What it
actually does.

Under the hood, shortcuts have always been XML files packaged in Apple’s proprietary .shortcut format. Shortcuts Playground ships a knowledge base that teaches Claude and Codex how every action works — then validates the result in a loop and produces a real shortcut for you.

001

Plain English in,
real shortcuts out.

Type one sentence in Claude Code or Codex. Get back a working .shortcut file ready to import.

/shortcuts-playground:build
002

Every action,
fully mapped.

Classic Workflow actions and modern AppIntents alike — the entire automation surface of iOS, iPadOS and macOS, documented and ready for the agent to use.

complete action coverage
003

The Craig Loop
catches it first.

Every file write triggers a structural validator. Errors feed straight back into the agent’s context so it can self-correct before import.

post-tool validation hook
004

Resume
and remix.

Pick up any prior session to iterate on a shortcut, or point the agent at an existing XML and describe what to change.

/shortcuts-playground:remix
02 — Examples

A sentence in.
A shortcut out.

Each of these started life as a single sentence. The agent designs the action list, wires the variables, picks an icon and packages the result. Open any of them on iCloud to see what came out.

ParkedCar iCloud · 7 actions
↗
save where i parked now, then later guide me back to my car
DailyDigest iCloud · 12 actions
↗
give me a quick morning digest with weather, calendar, and reminders
ActionItems iCloud
↗
turn this messy meeting note into clean action items and send to reminders
FlightBoard iCloud
↗
show my upcoming flights from calendar like a simple departure board
LinkCleaner iCloud
↗
clean this url and strip out tracking junk before i share it
MeetingNotes iCloud
↗
start a meeting note with agenda, discussion, action items, next steps
NightMode iCloud
↗
toggle my phone into night mode with dark mode and night shift
PasswordGen iCloud
↗
make a strong password and copy it so i can paste it right away
Browse 400+ free, pre-built shortcuts on MacStories →
03 — From the creator

Built by someone
who’s hand-wired hundreds.

A decade of shortcuts archived on MacStories, condensed into a plugin that gets you 90% of the way there in seconds — and then trusts you with the last 10%.

Shortcuts Playground is the ultimate democratization tool for Shortcuts: with it, you can just vibe-code an idea and will it into existence — without needing any prior Shortcuts knowledge.

I see that as an incredibly powerful thing for people who may not even know that their computers can automate something for them.

Federico Viticci
Founder, MacStories · 10+ years of iOS automation

Ready to build?

Type a sentence. Watch it become a shortcut you can run.

Read the full story
Path 03 Club MacStories → Members get the companion shortcut to build shortcuts directly on iPhone & iPad.