Shortcuts

Orchard lets your AI client discover, inspect, and run your local Apple Shortcuts. Shortcuts is a Pro integration.

What you can do

“List the shortcuts in my Work folder.”
“What shortcuts do I have that accept text input?”
“Open the ‘Convert to PDF’ shortcut so I can see what it does.”
“Run my ‘Clean Downloads’ shortcut, I want to tidy up before a client demo.”
“Run ‘Backup Photos’ with output saved to ~/Desktop/backup-log.txt, because I’m about to travel.”

Available tools

Tool	Description
`shortcuts_list`	List local shortcuts with name, ID, folder, whether they accept input, and action count. Filter by `folder_name` or a case-insensitive `query`.
`shortcuts_folders`	List custom Shortcuts folders.
`shortcuts_open`	Open a shortcut in the Shortcuts editor by name or ID.
`shortcuts_run`	Run a shortcut by name or ID, with optional text/file input and file output. Requires `confirm=true` and a non-empty `reason`.

Required permissions

Shortcuts needs Automation permission to drive the Shortcuts app. macOS prompts the first time a shortcuts tool runs; if denied, the error points you to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Automation.

macOS system permission prompt requesting automation access to run a shortcut

confirm and reason are mandatory, by design

A shortcut can contain arbitrary user-defined automation: file operations, network requests, system changes, anything you’ve built or installed. shortcuts_run refuses to run unless the caller passes confirm=true and a reason. This isn’t a bug, it’s the safety boundary that keeps an AI client from silently triggering an opaque, high-impact action on your behalf, and there’s no way to bypass it.

CLI usage

orchard shortcuts list --folder-name Work

orchard shortcuts open --name "Convert to PDF"

orchard shortcuts run --name "Clean Downloads" --confirm --reason "Tidying up before a client demo"

orchard shortcuts run --name "Backup Photos" --output-path ~/Desktop/backup-log.txt --confirm --reason "Backing up before travel"

The CLI mirrors the tool’s required fields: --confirm and --reason aren’t optional for run, no matter how it’s invoked.

Tips & limitations

Orchard runs a shortcut using its default execution mode unless you request --output-path, --output-type, or explicitly set --execution-mode cli; those options switch execution to the command-line path instead. Passing --output-path/--output-type together with --execution-mode applescript is rejected, since those options require the command-line path.
--input and --input-path are mutually exclusive; provide text or a file path, not both.
Default timeout is 120 seconds; override with --timeout-seconds, capped at 270 seconds. A shortcut that waits on user interaction or runs long will hit this timeout and fail: raise it (up to the cap) for known long-running shortcuts, or split the work into smaller shortcuts.
shortcuts_open and shortcuts_run need the exact (case-insensitive) name or ID, no partial matches. If you’re not sure of the exact name, use shortcuts_list with a query first (it matches on any part of the name or ID) to find it, then pass that exact name to open/run.