Build an iPhone Shortcut Your Friends Will Use
Maps to: Automation Engineer · AI Application Builder · Operations Analyst · Productivity Designer · Knowledge Worker
Every iPhone comes with an app called Shortcuts. In it you line up a few steps, and your phone runs them for you when you tap one button. What you build is called a Shortcut. You're going to build one that takes over a boring thing you keep doing by hand, with an AI doing the one step that needs some thinking. Then a few friends actually install it and use it. The skill is the eye for what is worth handing to a machine: spotting a thing you do over and over and going 'I could make that disappear.' People who build this for a living see a list of steps where everyone else sees a chore. You'll have a Shortcut friends keep on their phones.
You're done when: A Shortcut that does one useful thing with AI, that 3+ friends actually installed and ran, trimmed down until what is left works every single time. Getting it onto other phones is the work: not 'it ran once for me,' but 'other people actually use it.'
How this shows up on a resume or college app
I built an iOS Shortcut used by N friends, adding AI to a job I kept repeating and cutting it to the one step that works every time. I learned that thinking in chains of steps beats one-off tools: see a job you keep redoing, and make it run itself.
When you finish, Sidequest drafts your Common App activity description from what you actually built.
The plan
- 1
Step 1
Pick a job you keep redoing, and get your phone to do it once
Pick a job you do over and over, then build the plainest Shortcut you can, one that does only the easy part, and tap it once to watch your phone do it. No AI in it yet. Seeing it actually happen is what gets you; the clever part comes next.
- 2
Step 2
Add the one step where an AI does the thinking
Add the one step where an AI does the thinking: shortening your text, rewriting it, or pulling out just the bit you want. In the Shortcuts app each step is called an action. The one that sends your text off to the AI and brings the answer back is called Get Contents of URL. You sign up for a free code that lets it in, and it needs no credit card. This is where most people get stuck.
- 3
Step 3
Keep the one step that always works, then share it
Trim your Shortcut down to the one step that works every single time, and delete anything that only works sometimes. Then be honest: is the annoying bit it removes something other people have, or just you?