Jamie Thingelstad

Shortcuts on OS 26 got a big new feature with the ability to use Apple Intelligence models directly. I’ve already had a taste of this by using OpenAI API calls in Shortcuts to add LLM capabilities. You can see how I’m using AI in the Weekly Thing for some examples. Accessing LLM capabilities from Shortcuts is a very powerful capability for various automations. I love how easy this now is with Apple Intelligence.

To compare, this is how I did it with direct calls to the OpenAI API.

There is a lot of fussy stuff to do to get keys, pass dictionaries around, get the specific values, etc. And actually this is hiding the hardest of it all. If you expand that Get Contents of URL action you’ll see this.

No way anyone without programming background is going to do this successfully. On top of it, my method for doing this is really brittle and prone to errors. I’m not catching all the possible API responses and if there is a problem it will just bail.

I’m also just kind of hoping that the response is JSON and I can marshal it into a variable. It works, but the prompt has to be right and you’ll see I’m handling that in the API call.

So, how about with Apple Intelligence and the built-in integration? Night and day difference.

Of course it is easier but it is so much easier. And one of the big wins is the output format. You can just tell it what you would like to get back. This avoids a ton of prompt engineering and parsing.

The only thing I lose with all this complexity is the ability to do a system message. For all of my use cases this hasn’t mattered at all. I just merged the system message into the prompt.

This is so easy I would encourage a lot of experimentation to pull AI into your automation.

We were in the area and finally got to visit Kyiv Cakes in Lakeville today. I’ve wanted to come here for a while. They have a broad menu of Ukrainian as well as traditional baked goods. We got a slice of Honey Cake with raspberries and it was light and delicious! Recommended. 🇺🇦

We found ourselves with some open time this weekend and decided to check out the Lakeville Art Festival this morning. We’ve been to many art fairs but this was our first time to this particular one and we thought it was great. They had a great selection of art from artists in Minnesota and connected states. It was setup very nicely on grass instead of walking on blacktop.

It was great that they sectioned a stage with music and food into an entirely adjacent area with a good amount of picnic tables. It wasn’t hard to find a spot to sit a delightful lunch of Pizzeria 201 from Montgomery, MN (we drove there once to have their pizza) followed by some HomeTown Creamery ice cream. We also brought home some Groveland Confections chocolate.

Overall it had a nice and relaxed vibe.

Some artists that caught our eyes:

• Tin Cat Studio
• Amanda Pearson
• Pleasant Street Pottery
• Dan Wiemer
• Mya Austin
• Platypus Builds: We very nearly came home with a super cool lamp made entirely from wood.
• Reiko Uchytil
• Barret Lee
• Wenwen Liao
• Shane Anderson: Very “guy art” but I dug the concept and he had a bison painting that was interesting.
• Tyler Maddaus: His bison painting caught my eye.
• Burly Babe Woodworking
• Noah Sanders: We very nearly came home with one of his fox paintings. It may still happen.
• Ed Lefto: We purchased one of his birdhouses. (the URL is there, but no website)

I realized it had been a while since I checked in on my Dappnode that quietly chugs away running 32 validators for the Gnosis blockchain. It is monitored so I knew it was working but figured it was probably in need of some updates. Sure was!

I got a little shocked when I saw the uptime. 😬

This was much more behind than I thought it would be. I had some time so started the upgrades. I got some errors and had to reboot the Dappnode a couple of times to get updates to apply but eventually was able to get everything humming along nicely — never needing to do anything other than use the web browser.

I’ll try not to wait over a year to do the manual updates next.

We are having the stucco redashed on our house and I decided it was a good time to say goodbye to the grape vine that the previous owners had planted. Now a blank slate for something different next year. And the new stucco will go on very easy. Before and after photo.

Government censorship the “easy way or the hard way”.

ABC, a television network owned by Disney, suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night chat show indefinitely after the Federal Communications Commission’s chairman implied ABC’s broadcast licence was at risk. On Monday Mr Kimmel suggested that Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer was a MAGA sympathiser, sparking an outcry from conservatives. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC, said on Wednesday. Critics fear that free expression over Kirk is being silenced by firings and threats. — The Economist, The US in Brief, September 18th 2025

ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show following comments the American comedian made about the murder of Charlie Kirk. Mr Kimmel said the “MAGA gang” was scoring political points over the shooting of the right-wing activist, and pretending the murderer was “anything other than one of them”. Mr Trump–who is increasingly targeting what he considers left-wing organisations–congratulated the Disney-owned network for its action. — The Economist, The World in Brief, September 18th 2025

We wrapped up the 10th anniversary of SPS TechJam 2025 today. TechJam is our internal “unconference” led by members of our team that volunteer to give talks. We had so many great presentations and tons of learning. All of it wrapped around an AI focused Hackathon. It was incredible.