Features

Name: Clarissa
Author: Cameron Rye

Clarissa for Apple is designed to take full advantage of the platform, integrating deeply with iOS, macOS, and watchOS capabilities while maintaining the powerful AI assistant features you expect.

Calendar conversation on iPhone — iPhone

On-Device AI with Apple Foundation Models

Clarissa uses Apple's Foundation Models framework for completely private, on-device AI:

Privacy-first — All processing happens on your device
No internet required — Works offline after initial setup
Native tool calling — Tools execute through Apple's native API
Fast responses — Optimized for Apple Silicon with model prewarming
Private Cloud Compute — Seamless fallback to Apple's privacy-preserving server inference (with consent toggle)
Provider fallback — Suggests OpenRouter when Foundation Models encounters an error

Conversation Templates

Pre-built conversation starters with specialized system prompts, pre-enabled tools, and response tuning:

Morning Briefing — Weather + calendar + reminders summary for your day ahead
Meeting Prep — Event details + attendee info for your next meeting
Research Mode — Longer responses with web fetch and memory tools
Quick Math — Minimal context, fast calculator answers
Custom templates — Create your own with custom system prompts, tools, and response hints

Templates are available from the empty-state picker in chat, via Siri shortcuts ("Morning Briefing with Clarissa"), and as Apple Watch quick actions.

Proactive Intelligence

When enabled in Settings, Clarissa detects intent in your messages and prefetches relevant data before the agent responds:

Weather detection — Keywords like "cold", "rain", "weather" trigger a weather prefetch
Schedule detection — Time patterns like "tomorrow", "at 3pm" trigger a calendar prefetch
Parallel prefetch — Multiple intents detected simultaneously with a 2-second timeout
FM-only — Only activates with on-device Foundation Models (no API cost)

Note: This feature is opt-in and disabled by default. Enable it in Settings under "Proactive Context."

Edit, Regenerate & Error Recovery

Easily recover from dead ends without starting over:

Edit & Resend — Long-press any user message to edit and resend from that point
Regenerate — Long-press any assistant message to regenerate the response
Undo — One-level undo with ephemeral snapshot and banner
Auto error recovery — When the context window is exceeded, Clarissa automatically summarizes the conversation and retries
Manual summarize — Tap "Summarize conversation" in the context indicator to proactively manage context

Agent Visibility

See exactly what Clarissa is doing during multi-tool execution:

Tool plan view — Step-by-step progress displayed inline in chat
Live Activity — Dynamic Island and Lock Screen show real-time plan progress
Human-readable steps — Tool calls are translated to descriptions like "Checking your calendar..."

Tool execution progress on iPhone — Real-time tool execution with step-by-step progress

Voice Input

Speak naturally to Clarissa using built-in speech recognition:

SpeechAnalyzer (iOS 26+) — Dramatically faster and more accurate transcription
Tap the microphone button to start dictation
Speak your prompt naturally
Tap again to stop and send
Legacy fallback to SFSpeechRecognizer on older devices

Voice input mode on iPhone — Voice input with live transcription

Siri Shortcuts Integration

Clarissa exposes App Intents for use with Siri and the Shortcuts app:

"Ask Clarissa"

Invoke Clarissa with your voice:

"Hey Siri, ask Clarissa how to center a div"
"Hey Siri, talk to Clarissa"

Template Shortcuts

Start a specific template via Siri:

"Hey Siri, Morning Briefing with Clarissa"
"Hey Siri, Meeting Prep with Clarissa"
"Hey Siri, Research Mode with Clarissa"
"Hey Siri, Quick Math with Clarissa"

Follow-Up Conversations

Siri supports 5-minute follow-up sessions for back-and-forth conversation without repeating the trigger phrase.

Custom Shortcuts

Build your own automations in the Shortcuts app. Chain Clarissa with other actions to create powerful workflows.

Native Tools

The Apple version includes tools deeply integrated with iOS and macOS frameworks:

Calendar — Create, list, and search events with deep links to Calendar.app and Maps (EventKit)
Contacts — Search and view contacts with tap-to-call, message, or email actions
Reminders — Create, list, and complete reminders (EventKit)
Weather — Current conditions and forecast with expandable hourly/daily charts (WeatherKit + Swift Charts)
Location — Get current position with reverse geocoding (CoreLocation)
Web Fetch — Retrieve and parse web content with preview cards
Calculator — Mathematical calculations with copy-to-clipboard
Remember — Store information with auto-tagging, categories, and confidence scoring
Image Analysis — OCR, object detection, face detection, AI descriptions (Vision + Foundation Models)
Document OCR — Full-document recognition, PDF extraction, handwriting (Vision)

Tool Chains

Chain multiple tools together into reusable, multi-step workflows with output piping:

Argument piping — Reference previous step outputs with $N.path syntax (e.g., $1.temperature)
Built-in chains — Travel Prep, Daily Digest, Meeting Context, and Research & Save
Custom chains — Create your own with the chain editor: reorder steps, pick icons, mark steps optional
Preview & approve — See planned steps before execution; skip optional steps or cancel
Progress tracking — Real-time step-by-step progress displayed inline in chat
Shortcuts integration — Run any saved chain from the Shortcuts app with the "Run Tool Chain" action

Shortcuts Actions

8 standalone Shortcuts actions let you use Clarissa's tools directly in any automation:

Get Weather — Current conditions and forecast for any location
Get Calendar Events — Upcoming events for a date range
Create Reminder — Add reminders with title, date, and notes
Search Contacts — Find contacts by name
Calculate — Evaluate math expressions
Fetch Web Content — Retrieve and parse any URL
Save to Memory — Store information in Clarissa's long-term memory
Get Current Location — Your current position with address
Run Tool Chain — Execute any saved tool chain

All actions return values that can be piped into other Shortcuts actions for powerful automations.

Automation Triggers

Run tool chains automatically based on context:

Time-of-day — Schedule chains to run at specific times (e.g., Daily Digest every morning)
Location — Trigger chains when arriving at or leaving a location
Focus mode — Run chains when a Focus mode activates (e.g., Work Focus triggers Meeting Context)

Configure triggers in Settings under Automation. All triggers are managed by the AutomationManager and persist across app launches.

Smart Notifications

Clarissa proactively notifies you with contextual, actionable alerts:

Scheduled check-ins — Set per-day check-in times; Clarissa runs your chosen chain and delivers results as a notification
Calendar alerts — Get notified before meetings with attendee count and context, powered by EventKit scanning
Memory reminders — Detects time-sensitive patterns in your memories (e.g., "follow up by Friday", "check this week") and reminds you

Notification actions include Reply (text input), Snooze (1 hour), Open, and Dismiss.

Widgets

Glanceable information on your Home Screen and Lock Screen:

Morning briefing — Weather + next event + top reminder, updated on a timeline schedule
Memory spotlight — Surfaces contextual memories scored by confidence, time-of-day relevance, and recency
StandBy card — Rotating contextual info optimized for StandBy mode on iPhone
Live Activity — Dynamic Island and Lock Screen show real-time progress during multi-tool execution

Session Intelligence

Organize and navigate your conversations with powerful session features:

Pin messages — Long-press to pin important messages; pinned messages appear in a strip above the conversation
Tags — Manually tag sessions or let Clarissa auto-detect topics from your conversation
Favorites — Star sessions with a swipe action; filter your history to show favorites only
Enhanced search — Search across session titles, summaries, tags, and message content
Session summaries — AI-generated summaries for quick browsing of past conversations

Session history on iPhone — Search and filter conversation history

Offline Mode

Clarissa works even without a network connection:

Network monitoring — Detects connectivity changes and displays an offline banner
Cached tool results — Recently fetched weather, calendar, and other data remain available offline
Stale data indicators — Clearly marks when displayed data may be outdated
On-device AI — Foundation Models work entirely offline after initial setup

Export & Sharing

Share conversations in multiple formats:

PDF export — Export conversations as styled PDF documents
Share as image — Long-press any assistant message to share as an image
Code block copy — Copy code blocks with syntax highlighting
Markdown export — Export conversation history as Markdown text

Share Extension

Share content from any app directly to Clarissa:

Share text, URLs, or images from Safari, Notes, Mail, and more
Shared content appears in a new conversation for immediate processing
Chain triggers — Attach a tool chain to shared content and run it with one tap from the banner
Uses App Group storage for seamless handoff to the main app

Session Management

Conversations are automatically saved and organized:

Auto-save — Never lose a conversation
Title generation — AI-generated titles for easy browsing
History sidebar — Quick access to past conversations
Search & filter — Search conversation history by date and topic
Resume anytime — Pick up where you left off

Long-Term Memory

Clarissa remembers important information across conversations with an intelligent memory system:

Categories — Facts, preferences, routines, and relationships
Confidence scoring — Memories decay when unused and boost when accessed
Relationship linking — Related memories are connected for richer context
Relevance ranking — Multi-factor retrieval weighted by topic, confidence, recency, and category
iCloud sync — Memories sync across devices with timestamp-based conflict resolution
Memory review — Manage memories in Settings with category badges and confidence indicators

Streaming Responses

Watch responses appear in real-time as the AI generates them. Tool executions are displayed inline so you can see exactly what Clarissa is doing, with step-by-step progress in the chat UI and Dynamic Island.