Building a Cultural Bridge: My Late-Night Hack with iOS Shortcuts and AI
You know those moments right before falling asleep when your mind wanders and suddenly you get an idea you just have to try out? That’s exactly what happened to me last night. Living in Amsterdam as a non-Dutch speaker, I’ve always struggled to keep up with local news and understand the cultural context behind the stories. Sure, I could use Google Translate, but I wanted something more… comprehensive.
I remembered that iOS has this feature called Shortcuts that lets you create automations by connecting different app actions together. What caught my attention was that both Claude and ChatGPT have APIs that can be accessed through Shortcuts. This got me thinking – what if I could create a simple tool to help me better understand Dutch news articles?
Building upon an existing shortcut I had for removing ads from web pages, I put together a multi-step workflow that does the following:
