App Intents
Structured actions your app can expose to Siri, Shortcuts, Spotlight, widgets, and other system experiences.
Apple Intelligence / App Discoverability
Apple just opened a new discovery layer for apps.
With App Intents, App Entities, Siri, Spotlight, Shortcuts, and Home Screen search, Apple is providing apps a new way to expose their content and actions to the system layer. For product, retail, booking, service, and catalog apps, this is a new type of visibility opportunity.
This is not traditional SEO, App Store Optimization, or a Siri shortcut checklist. It is about making app content and actions structured enough for Apple’s system layer to understand.
Shift
The app icon is no longer the only entry point.
For years, mobile strategy focused on getting users to download an app, find the icon, and navigate to the right product, appointment, order, or feature. Apple’s latest updates create another path: app content and actions can now be surfaced by Siri, Spotlight, Shortcuts, Home Screen search, widgets, and contextual suggestions.
The question is no longer only whether users can find your app. It is whether Apple’s system can understand what is inside it.
The stack
What Apple is connecting
App Entities
Structured objects inside the app — products, appointments, orders, saved items, locations, collections, or accounts — that the system can reference.
Spotlight indexing
A way for eligible app content to become searchable from system-level surfaces such as Home Screen search and Spotlight.
Search handoff
A path for Siri or system search to open the app directly into a relevant search state, instead of dropping the user at the home screen.
View annotations
A way to connect visible interface elements to underlying app entities, so the system can better understand what the user is looking at.
App Intents testing
A developer workflow for validating that app actions, entities, and system integrations continue to work as the app changes.
Opportunity
Why this matters for customer-facing apps
The strongest opportunities are often mid-market apps with valuable content, repeat customer actions, and enough usage to matter, but without a dedicated Apple-platform strategy team.
Product catalogs, booking flows, order status, loyalty accounts, inventory search, showroom tools, and service scheduling all contain information users may want before they manually open an app.
This is relevant for furniture and home furnishings, lighting, flooring, regional retail, restaurants, hospitality, healthcare, B2B parts catalogs, venues, museums, universities, and any app where search and actionable content matter.
Example
A catalog app, made understandable to the system.
Product becomes an entity
A walnut dining table is modeled with name, room, material, finish, dimensions, image, collection, and availability.
Search becomes system-addressable
A user searches from the Home Screen for “walnut dining table” or asks Siri to search the catalog.
Actions become available
The app can open the product, save it, request a quote, find a dealer, or book a showroom appointment.
Important note: Apple’s system behavior, user context, privacy rules, and implementation quality determine what surfaces are actually shown. The opportunity is to make the app eligible and understandable, not to promise a fixed ranking or placement.
Framework
The readiness framework
What content inside the app should become entities?
Identify the objects users search for, revisit, compare, or act on repeatedly.
Which user actions are valuable enough to expose?
Focus on actions with clear customer value: search, open, save, book, reorder, find, check, or continue.
Can app search be handed off from Siri or Spotlight?
Consider whether the system can send people into a meaningful search state instead of a generic app home screen.
Are product, booking, order, or account objects represented clearly?
The system can only work with objects that are modeled cleanly and named consistently.
Can the app’s current architecture support native Apple integrations?
Native, hybrid, vendor-managed, and wrapped apps all carry different implementation constraints.
Is the app native, hybrid, wrapped, or vendor-maintained?
This changes what is realistic in the near term and what requires deeper platform work.
What can be indexed safely without exposing private data?
Customer convenience and privacy need to be designed together, not bolted on later.
What should require confirmation before action?
Some surfaces may support discovery better than execution. Sensitive actions should still stay gated.
How will usage be measured?
Readiness work should define what counts as a useful discovery, continuation, or action outcome.
What should be tested before release?
Intent accuracy, entity quality, search handoff, privacy boundaries, and edge-case behavior all need validation.
Sunder role
What Sunder can help clarify
Apple App Discoverability Readiness Brief
The Apple App Discoverability Readiness Brief is a focused strategy for teams that want to understand how Apple’s new app discovery layer applies to their app, catalog, booking flow, or customer actions.
Sunder provides strategy, specification, and roadmap first. Implementation may involve the client’s iOS team, app vendor, or a native development partner.
App surface review
Entity and action map
Search and Spotlight opportunity map
Siri and Shortcut use-case flows
Native implementation considerations
Developer handoff roadmap
Measurement and testing recommendations
Fit
Who this is for
Product and catalog teams
Retail and ecommerce teams
Furniture, home, lighting, and showroom brands
Regional apps with loyalty, inventory, booking, or repeat actions
Teams with an existing app that has not been revisited around Apple Intelligence
Teams planning a new app and wanting the architecture ready from the start
Trust boundary
What this is not
Not traditional SEO
Not App Store Optimization
Not a guarantee of Spotlight placement
Not just adding a Siri shortcut
Not a reason to build an app when a website is enough
The point is to evaluate whether the app has content and actions valuable enough for Apple’s system layer and, if so, how to model them responsibly.