IndexedEntities and Siri AI

Currently, I have spotlight entities show up when I search for them using Spotlight on iOS 27. These entities are things that are important for users, like campus buildings, accessible entrances, assignments, and more.

However, after getting access to Siri AI, it seems that none of this information at all is available to Siri, yet all of it is sitting there in the spotlight index and viewable with a written query. I was told by an Apple Engineer that creating Indexed and EnumerableEntities, and indexing them via the App Intents framework, should expose information about these items to Siri, so if I query: "[Building name] in Ohio State" it would at least show me what the app has for that information.

Presently, Siri uses the web for everything and doesn't pull in any spotlight information for my app, despite either creating wrapper entities or using the API associating with spotlight.

With Siri AI, it would be so much more helpful for a disabled user to say "Orton Hall accessible entrance" and Siri to know that there's 1 accessible entrance indexed in spotlight in my app, and then show or open it, instead of querying the web or saying it can't answer the question. It has all available information already in spotlight to answer this question. Currently, as far as I'm aware, something like this simply doesn't work, unless your app conforms to the strict use cases of making reminders or calendar events, all of which aren't useful here.

Can a Frameworks engineer please clarify precisely when and how IndexedEntities (paired with an a corresponding macro-annotated OpenIntent) eg:

@AppIntent(schema: .system.open)
struct OpenBuildingIntent: OpenIntent { 

 @Parameter(title: "Building")
    var Building: BuildingEntity
...

will or will not be visible using Siri AI? To me it seems I have wasted a lot of time porting actions within my app to App Intents, and viewable entities with AppEntity, only to have Siri not be able to use any of this information out of the box.

Thanks for the post. Hope the framework team jumps in this thread as well.

I’m guessing that by now you have seen the App Intent video from WWDC 26 about donating data to Siri? The WWDC 26 video "Explore advanced App Intents features for Siri and Apple Intelligence" discusses how to make your app's content and actions available to Siri and Apple Intelligence, including techniques for interaction donations and semantic index integration. These methods allow you to provide context for on-screen awareness and help Apple Intelligence find your content, which is central to donating data to Siri https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/343/

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/240/

To clarify from a Frameworks perspective: **There is a fundamental difference between how Spotlight uses indexed data and how Siri with Apple Intelligence uses App Intents Spotlight acts as a database. When you index items in Spotlight, you are making them searchable.

Siri cannot spontaneously read the properties of your BuildingEntity to answer a conversational question like, *"How many accessible entrances does Orton Hall have?" unless you explicitly build an Intent to answer that exact question. When you mark an AppEntity as an IndexedEntity @Parameter(title: "Building") you are giving Siri a list to use for resolution.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/making-actions-and-content-discoverable-by-apple-intelligence

Related post https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/829586

Resources: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/making-actions-and-content-discoverable-by-apple-intelligence

Albert  WWDR

IndexedEntities and Siri AI
 
 
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