App Intents & the New Siri
iOS 27's Siri can reach into your app and run actions for people who never open it. That is a discovery channel and a retention leak in the same feature. I build the App Intents and assistant schemas that let Siri, Spotlight, and Shortcuts drive your app, and I design each one so the user lands back inside your funnel instead of getting their answer from Siri and never opening you again.
- App Intents and assistant schemas that expose the right actions to Siri without handing away the engagement those actions used to drive
- intent design as a funnel: every Siri or Spotlight entry point routes the user back into your app instead of stranding them on a system reply
- entitlement-gated intents, so a premium action stays premium when Siri runs it instead of becoming a free side door around your paywall
What clients say
"Vadim was instrumental to the success Epsy enjoyed on iOS, taking it from an idea on a Miro board to the highest rated and most downloaded app of its kind on the store."
James C. · Mobile Engineering Lead, Epsy
"We had a strict deadline, and Vadim managed to complete the job in time. He gave us meaningful feedback and suggested better approaches, not trying to blindly stick to our specification."
Founder · Pre-seed streaming service
"I can say with confidence that it will be difficult to find a better developer. Vadim is achievement-oriented, highly organized, with very good communication skills."
Alex Z. · Co-Founder, eda.so
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Common engagements
Make your app Siri-controllable
I make your app controllable by Siri, Spotlight, and Shortcuts from one body of work. The modelling is the straightforward half. The part that decides whether it works in the wild is the phrasing real users say, which is never the phrasing in the documentation, so most teams ship intents that match the demo and miss how people actually talk. Closing that gap is the job.
Protect monetisation before you ship intents
The fast way to add App Intents quietly turns your paid features into free Siri commands, and the gate that stops that has to live somewhere most tutorials skip. I put it in the right place, so a subscriber gets the action and a free user gets the upsell. The second trap is invisible: intents that run outside the app never reach your funnel metrics unless someone wires that up, so your DAU looks like it is falling while usage climbs. I build it so the new Siri becomes an upsell surface rather than a hole in your revenue.
Audit an existing App Intents setup
You already shipped intents and something is off: Siri picks the wrong action, premium leaks, or invocations do not show up in analytics. I review the intent and schema design, find where the phrasing or the entitlement gate went wrong, and hand you the fix list ranked by what is costing you money first.
Pricing
Architecture reviews, hiring help, second opinions on that thing that's been bugging you.
Features, MVPs, migrations, firefighting. Minimum 5 days.
Priority support: review agency code, join architecture calls, catch problems before they ship.
Questions
Will Siri integration cannibalise our engagement?
It can, if you build it naively. The risk is real: Apple is pushing an 'appless' model where users get answers from Siri without opening anything. The defence is to treat each intent as a doorway back into the app rather than a way to hand the whole interaction to the system. A weather lookup can end in Siri's voice; a 'log my workout' action should drop the user on their streak screen. Drawing that boundary, action by action, is the strategic part, and it is the part that protects your retention.
How much of this works in the EU?
More than you would expect. Siri's new AI features are blocked in the EU under the DMA right now, but App Intents, Shortcuts, and Spotlight are not. So your European users still get app actions, Shortcuts automations, and Spotlight surfacing even though the conversational Siri layer is missing for them. If most of your revenue is EU, that changes which parts are worth building first, and I will tell you where to spend the effort.
We already have Siri Shortcuts from years ago. Do we redo it all?
Usually a rewrite, yes, but a worthwhile one. The old SiriKit intents and the donate-based Shortcuts are a different model from modern App Intents, and the new Siri matches against the new one, so the legacy setup will not get you the on-screen awareness or the assistant integration. I migrate the actions worth keeping and drop the ones that were never invoked, so you carry forward the value and none of the dead weight.
What does it cost us in app size or performance?
Close to nothing. App Intents are lightweight metadata plus your existing action code; there is no model bundled and no runtime to ship. The real cost is the one teams miss: if intent invocations are not instrumented, the price shows up later as blind spots in your metrics. I build the measurement in from the start so you are not flying blind on a feature you cannot see.
How quickly can you start?
Advisory calls can happen within days. For project work, I typically need 1-2 weeks notice to clear the calendar, though I keep some buffer for urgent firefighting. Check the availability badges above for current openings.
Do you work with early-stage startups?
Yes, from pre-seed to Series C and beyond. For very early teams, the advisory tier often makes more sense than project work: you get architecture guidance without committing to a large engagement before you've validated the product.
What's included in the day rate?
Everything: code, architecture decisions, code review, documentation, async Slack availability during working hours. No surprise add-ons. I bill for time spent working on your project, not for "thinking about it in the shower."
We're in a different timezone. Will that slow things down?
I'm currently in Vancouver (PST), with full overlap for North American teams. For UK and Europe, I'm online by their afternoon. For Gulf or APAC, we'd agree on overlap hours and handle the rest async. I've worked with teams from San Francisco to Dubai.
Areas I cover
Where I've worked CV LinkedIn
Adding App Intents or Siri support?
Tell me what you're working on. I reply within 48 hours.
work@drobinin.com