For assistants that need multi-step tool use (search → fetch → compare → respond), should third-party apps expose capabilities as App Intents for on-device model selection, or keep tool orchestration on the server and use on-device models only for speech and summarization? What breaks when the same action exists in both places?

With different VLMs supporting different size and background color if padding is needed… and iOS 27 AFM being the most flexible… the previous talk mentioned that the context size suffers for this flexibility… so what’s the best format/size/background for the app to pre-process to minimize token use… much thanks

Is Evaluations only for swift or does it support other languages like python and others?

Visual Intelligence lets users ask Siri about what the camera or screen shows, and the screenshot tool can extract structured data into system apps. Can a third-party app contribute results or actions when the user invokes Visual Intelligence over the app's own content or a screenshot of it (analogous to how a schedule becomes calendar events), and what API surfaces that? For the Image Playground API, what are the content, rate, and style constraints, and can generated assets be used in commercial app contexts? Is there a supported way for an app to provide its own visual understanding to the system rather than relying solely on Apple's model — for domain-specific imagery the on-device model may not recognize?

The Foundation Models framework is clearly designed around language, but there's a large class of on-device AI tasks that are not language tasks at all. Time series forecasting is one example think energy consumption modeling, or sensor anomaly detection. These models take sequences of numeric data and output probabilistic forecasts. No text involved at any layer. Is there any intention to extend Foundation Models or a sibling framework to non-language modalities specifically structured numeric and time series inference

When using the 'Summarize History' modifier, can we configure the summarization prompt to specifically preserve certain metadata like tool call IDs so that a resumed conversation can still reference previously executed app actions?

Are the on-device Apple foundation models like AFM 3 Core shipped as CoreAI models or do they use some different technology? Is it possible to open them in the Core AI Debugger to understand them in detail?

Any guidance if we want the iOS 27 SystemLanguageModel to always defer to our app for all answers and not its built-in training for responses

After reviewing the WWDC sessions on Foundation Models and Core AI, I had a few questions around the practical limits and architectural direction of the platform. From my understanding, on-device Foundation Models remain optimized for privacy, latency, and efficiency, which naturally introduces constraints around context length and agent complexity. Has anything changed regarding the effective context window available to developers, or should we still design around similar context-management constraints as before? Core AI appears to introduce a more structured approach to building AI-powered applications. For developers building sophisticated assistants, how should we think about the boundary between application-level orchestration and framework-level orchestration? For example, are advanced patterns such as sub-agents, hierarchical planning, dynamic tool availability, and workflow decomposition expected to remain developer-managed, or are these areas Core AI aims to support more directly over time? I am also curious about Apple's vision for model interoperability. While Foundation Models provide an excellent on-device experience, many production-grade agent systems combine multiple specialized models for planning, reasoning, retrieval, and execution. Does Apple envision future pathways for integrating external models into Core AI driven workflows while maintaining the privacy and performance principles of the platform? Finally, for teams pushing the limits of on-device AI assistants, what architectural patterns do you recommend for handling long-horizon tasks, large context requirements, evolving toolsets, and multi-step reasoning within the current Foundation Models ecosystem?

For voice assistants with many capabilities, is it better to ship one generic ‘ask assistant’ intent with a natural-language parameter, or many typed intents (GetForecast, CompareLocations, etc.)? What are Siri’s limits on disambiguation and follow-up turns?

After reviewing the WWDC sessions on Foundation Models and Core AI, I had a few questions around the practical limits and architectural direction of the platform. From my understanding, on-device Foundation Models remain optimized for privacy, latency, and efficiency, which naturally introduces constraints around context length and agent complexity. Has anything changed regarding the effective context window available to developers, or should we still design around similar context-management constraints as before? Core AI appears to introduce a more structured approach to building AI-powered applications. For developers building sophisticated assistants, how should we think about the boundary between application-level orchestration and framework-level orchestration? For example, are advanced patterns such as sub-agents, hierarchical planning, dynamic tool availability, and workflow decomposition expected to remain developer-managed, or are these areas Core AI aims to support more directly over time? I am also curious about Apple's vision for model interoperability. While Foundation Models provide an excellent on-device experience, many production-grade agent systems combine multiple specialized models for planning, reasoning, retrieval, and execution. Does Apple envision future pathways for integrating external models into Core AI driven workflows while maintaining the privacy and performance principles of the platform? Finally, for teams pushing the limits of on-device AI assistants, what architectural patterns do you recommend for handling long-horizon tasks, large context requirements, evolving toolsets, and multi-step reasoning within the current Foundation Models ecosystem?

When a spoken phrase could match several entities in our catalog — same region, similar names, or partial matches — who is responsible for disambiguation: Siri via App Schemas and entity resolution, or the app via EntityStringQuery returning multiple candidates? What’s the recommended UX pattern for ‘Did you mean A or B?’

Can App Intents perform authenticated backend calls (Bearer token in Keychain / App Group) and return structured results to Siri, or must execution always launch the host app first?

The Foundation Models framework is adding built-in OCR and barcode reader tools this year . If we implement a custom backend using the Language Model Protocol, can we return complex multi-modal objects (like bounding boxes or segmentation masks) back to the agentic flow, or is the protocol currently limited to text-based responses? For the 'Phone a Friend' pattern, is there a standard way to pass 'privacy-preserving embeddings' instead of raw text when calling a third-party model to maintain a higher level of user data protection?

We offer both cloud-based AI (subscription) and are exploring on-device Apple Intelligence features. What user profile data is appropriate to inject into on-device model sessions under Apple’s privacy guidelines, and how should apps disclose hybrid cloud + on-device AI in privacy nutrition labels and review?

What’s Apple’s guidance for using on-device models to turn structured JSON (time series, metrics, units) into a one-line natural-language summary without inventing values?

LLMs are renowned for using so much RAM. Does this mean we can't essentially use FoundationModels in extensions such as MessageFilterExtension? I assume the system kills the extension before we even get a response.

Since agents in Xcode 27 can now interact with the accessibility tree and screenshots, can we provide 'developer hints' in our code to help the agent distinguish between decorative UI and critical interactive elements during automated testing? Can the Evaluations framework be used to 'score' the efficiency of an agent’s navigation path through the app, helping us identify where our App Intents might be creating confusing or redundant loops for Apple Intelligence?

What’s the supported integration path for Foundation Models and Apple Intelligence from a React Native app — thin Swift native module, App Intents only, or are these features effectively Swift-first?

If users dictate into a standard TextField via the keyboard mic instead of a dedicated in-app record button, does that text still benefit from App Intents entity resolution and indexed entities — or is keyboard dictation a separate pipeline where we lose domain vocabulary unless the user invokes Siri directly?