Every button in the app is also a sentence the system can read.
Next, Not now, Write it down, Stop: each is written once as an App Intent. Siri, Shortcuts, the Lock Screen, the watch and the Action button all call the same one. That is the design, and we think it is where apps are going.
An App Intent is an action with a name, inputs and a description.
An app used to be a set of screens, and the only way to use it was to look at one and touch it. An App Intent is a second way in: the app says, in code, “here is something I can do, here is what I need to do it, here is what I will tell you after”. The system reads that list, and anything that can read it can use it.
Here is the one behind “Next step in Routine Run”:
| Part | What it is for | In Next Step |
|---|---|---|
| Name | What every surface calls it | Next Step |
| Inputs | Typed, so the system can ask for what is missing | Which run. Left empty, it means the one in hand |
| Description and keywords | Read by people in Shortcuts, and by anything that searches | “Moves a run to its next step”, with advance, done, forward |
| What it does | The one place the work is written | Moves the run on, in the background, without opening the app |
| What it answers | A sentence and a card, drawn wherever it was asked | The new step, and a card with it |
Nothing in that list is about Siri. The phrase is a separate, optional layer on top. That is why the action also works where there is no voice at all.
An app you can only touch is an app only your thumb can use.
A thumb is one caller. An app that declares its actions has made the thing it does a thing others can ask for: Siri by voice, a shortcut you built at midnight, a button on a card, a model that is helping you write. The app does not need to know which one called. It gets the same request, runs the same code and gives the same answer.
Routine Run is built the other way round from most apps. The screens are one caller of the actions, not the place where the work happens.
Next Step is written once and shows up in seven.
The same few lines sit behind all of these. Fix one and you have fixed them all.
Other actions reach other places. Start is a row in Spotlight for every routine you have, already filled in. Do the One Thing is what the Action button runs. A Focus filter is also an intent: switch on a Focus and it decides which routines may reach you. Control Centre tiles are intents too.
Five reasons, and none of them is about Siri.
The caller keeps changing, the action does not
First a thumb, then a voice, then a shortcut, now a model. An app built on actions works with each new caller on the day it exists. An app built on screens has to be rebuilt for every one.
Small actions compose
Shortcuts is a way to chain actions that were never planned together. We have seen it: a loop that reads a value, adds one and sends the run back, and an on-call chain where a push from PagerDuty starts a run. We ran that one end to end on a phone on 22 September 2026. It needs iOS 27, and it works because every step is an action, not a screen.
Names and types are readable by models
A model cannot press a button it cannot see. It can read a list of actions with names, inputs and descriptions, so we write those for a reader that is not us. The same actions are what the Ask shortcut hands a model’s answer to, whichever model you pick.
The system carries the plumbing
Permissions, background running, the Lock Screen, the watch and the phrase matching are the system’s job. We ask for no account, and the work happens on your phone, inside the app.
It rewards small, honest actions
An action that does one thing is easy to describe, easy to undo and hard to misuse by accident. A vague action is a risk when a model can call it. So every change Siri makes keeps the earlier version.
Six things the documentation does not say.
Ten phrases is a budget
Apple allows an app ten. We spent them like money: “Open Routine Run” went because the icon already does it, Snooze went because it is a button on the card it answers, and Current Step went because In Hand says the step and a button on it.
A button needs the right kind of intent
Pressed on a Live Activity as a plain App Intent, Next ran in the widget extension, found no run and did nothing. The fix is a Live Activity intent, which runs inside the app, and every action a card can press is one.
Say nothing when the press worked
Shortcuts draws any dialog as a sheet with a Done button. A hardware button that answered with a sentence put a card over whatever you were looking at to say it had worked. The Action button’s intent says nothing.
Do not ask for a face
Five of our actions once required Face ID. It read well and was wrong. Next from a locked phone, a loop in Shortcuts and a card at 2am are the reasons the actions exist. What is undoable is not asked about. Every action here is open.
Write at once, keep the old one
Said to Siri, a change to a routine is saved straight away, because nobody is looking at a page. Every one stores the earlier version first, and Undo Change to a Routine puts it back.
The phone caches the list
Shortcuts remembers an app’s actions by build number. A new action does not appear on a device until the build number changes, which cost us a few confusing afternoons.
Two minutes, no setup.
- 1Open Shortcuts and tap Routine Run.
Every action the app has is listed, with its description. There are more than fifty.
- 2Build a shortcut from two of them.
Try Next Step followed by Write It Down. You have composed something the app never planned.
- 3Run it from the Action button, a widget or Siri.
Add it to the Home Screen, bind it in Settings → Action Button, or say its name. Same action, new caller.
Hear it first.
Every phrase Siri knows in Routine Run, and a morning that uses them.
Every action, with what it does, is in Siri and Shortcuts. What leaves the phone is on Privacy.