Introducing Ollama Shortcuts UI (OSUI) for Local AI Workflows on Macbook Pro
Welp, I've done something absolutely mad this weekend... I built ⭐️ Ollama Shortcuts UI ⭐️, a browser-based interface for no-code AI workflows on Mac, powered by Ollama and Apple Shortcuts.
With this tool, we can now build multi-step intelligent automations using Shortcuts as the basic blocks.
👨🏼🔬 BUT WHY, SHEP? 👨🏼🔬
I'll tell you why, friend.
The problem: Shortcuts ain’t built for AI… yet
.Shortcuts are a simple, powerful productivity booster, and the tool is fully integrated with most of Mac's popular native apps.
Adding Ollama to Shortcuts can power a huge range of tasks on Mac with AI, thanks to Ollama's local API for response generation
Despite this synergy, the Shortcuts UI sucks for AI workflow design. This limitation prevents us from creating complex AI-powered automations natively on Mac.
The solution: Ollama Shortcuts UI.
It runs in a single Python file with no additional dependencies, and pulls in all your Shortcuts for workflow creation. My personal AI Shortcuts suite includes actions like email summarization, problem space exploration, concept generation, etc.
Each shortcut now becomes a flexible module I can leverage in a larger workflow automation system.
So for example, I can now create a chain of shortcuts that:
summarizes an email
feeds that summary into an ideation engine to produce thought starters
↦ SPLITS THE WORKFLOW INTO 2 BRANCHES
c.1) creates a Mindnode mindmap of concepts expanding on the thought starters
c.2) writes AI Image prompts for visualizing the ideas
All with no code, using only my prebuilt shortcuts.
And the real kicker is how this system can also interact with other apps on Mac, such as Mindnode, calendar, email, etc.
It's a hilarous Frankenstein version of function calling with AI models. And by the way, no data leaves your computer with this. It's all local on your machine.
Design-wise, the app needs a makeover, and really the only piece that works correctly right now is the workflow dashboard.
But hey – it's functional and innovative, so I'm shipping it. I've even included one basic Ollama building block Shortcut for you to run it with.
I will be updating this going forward, and am open to all contributions and suggestions.
Upcoming features:
Fixing the other tabs (improving Form Builder, Context Manager, etc.)
Designing and open sourcing more Ollama shortcut 'blocks' for users to leverage with the app
Building a more flexible system on the front end for selecting from available Ollama models, saving user & system prompts, etc.
Adding an API endpoint to call workflows via API, which allows you to build a shortcut that runs a workflow (meta).
Figuring out how to introduce an Agentic design pattern whereby AI models can join a group chat for group problem solving, similar to Microsoft Autogen
