PiChat turns iPhone Shortcuts into a background AI agent

Everyone wants a phone assistant that can actually run errands in the background, but strict mobile operating systems usually kill the dream before it starts.

Notification triggers and crash-proof runs

PiChat connects large language models, agent extensions, and persistent execution directly with iPhone Shortcuts to get around that limitation.

Instead of waiting for manual prompts, it kicks off actions from incoming system notifications. For example, you can tell PiChat: whenever the calendar alerts me that the weekly meeting is starting, turn on Do Not Disturb and mute the volume, then restore them when the meeting ends.

Under the hood, it relies on PiDurableKit for persistent background autonomy. Dialogue records and tool invocations are written to storage before execution. That way, even if iOS terminates the app in the background, it picks up right where it left off once reopened without losing progress.

Why it matters

Mobile AI agents have long struggled with two fundamental bottlenecks: limited OS-level permissions and aggressive memory management that wipes out ongoing tasks.

We think PiChat takes a clever shortcut here. Rather than fighting iOS security boundaries, it uses Apple's native Shortcuts framework to control the device, pairing it with write-ahead persistence to survive background kills. It is a pragmatic workaround that could bring functional mobile automation to users well before platform owners overhaul their native assistants.