AI Studio
A note goes in — a finished file comes out.
AI Studio turns pages into transcripts, summaries and documents — on the Mac itself or on your own key. Actions are assembled from steps, prompts are written in your own words, and a rule does the work by itself for new notes in a folder. The result lands where you expect it: next to the document on the tablet or in a folder on your Mac.
Providers: Apple Intelligence, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, Yandex AI Studio, or a server of your own.
four steps, two of them optional
Actions
Built in or your own
an action is a file
Ready out of the box
no setupTranscript, Summary, Highlights — all work the moment you install.
Your own actions
Copy a built-in one or start from scratch — it shows up in the Finder menu with the rest.
From Finder
Two items in the context menu: “AI Actions…” for actions and “Send to…” for sending a document to an integration as it is.
How it’s built
Pages, reading, model, writing
Pages
The whole document, or only what a marker covered. “Highlights only” is a switch on any action. In a PDF the tablet already lifted the highlighted text itself: it sits in the document, so there is nothing to read again and nothing to pay for. Under a marker on a handwritten page, the writing is read by an engine on this Mac, not in the cloud.
Reading
optionalOne of the recognition engines. What it reads is stored and never read twice.
Model and prompt
optionalA prompt is stored apart from the action: three built in, your own by duplicating them. With no model, an action becomes a plain transcript.
Writing
Nine formats, two of which — the document as it is and the pages as images — call neither a model nor recognition. A searchable PDF is your pages as they are with an invisible text layer: the handwriting stays, and the text can be searched and copied. On macOS 27 such a file carries structure as well — page, figure, lines grouped into paragraphs — which is what apps that reflow text or read it aloud work from.
Prompts
The wording lives apart from the action
one prompt, as many actions as you like
Three built in
ready“Summary,” “Verbatim transcript” and “To-do list.” Closed to editing, open to duplication — that’s how your own prompt starts.
Your own
its own tabA name, a description, tags, and the connections the prompt may run on; leave the field empty and it runs on any.
Placeholders
The fields title, date, language and pages are filled in by the app. Your prompt says what to write; how the file is assembled and how pages are marked up is the app’s decision.
Picked inside an action
First the connection, then the prompts that run on it, narrowed by tag if you like. An action doesn’t hold the wording itself, so one prompt can sit in several actions.
Automation
A rule does the work by itself
with a lock and a meter
The rule
A folder, a condition, an action and a monthly budget in dollars. New notes in “Research” get a summary beside them, with no help from you. Everything else in AI Studio waits for a click.
The budget
$5 a month by default. At the limit the rule stops itself and shows a notification, then carries on the first of the month.
The log
Every run is a row: tokens, a price from our rate table, the confidence of the recognition. A model with no price is marked “unknown” and left out of the total. The log narrows by month and by source — rule or hand; a finished run can be repeated.
A fallback model
If a model refuses to read a document, a second model on the same connection takes it. The switch is written into the log. You can also read it locally — through Apple Vision.
The map
How prompts, actions and rules fit together
a prompt is words, an action is the assembly, a rule is the schedule
Money and privacy
Your key, your bill
no server of ours stands between you
Who you pay
The provider you connected, at its own rates. Nothing passes through us — there’s no markup because there’s no transaction.
Where the key is
In the macOS Keychain. The rest of the app only gets a reference to the connection, never the key itself.
What goes out
Pages go to a model only through an action you clicked or a rule you set up. There are no background summaries.
There’s no chat window
Every call stands behind something named — an action, a rule, an engine. It’s always clear why a request was made.
FAQ
Questions about AI Studio
- Do I need an AI subscription?
- To use Slate Drive, no. A key is needed only for steps that call a provider’s model. Apple Intelligence works without one: the on-device model from macOS 26, Private Cloud Compute from macOS 27.
- Who do I pay, and how much?
- The provider you connected, at its rates. The log shows an estimate for every run.
- What if a model refuses to read a document?
- A fallback model on the same connection takes it, or you read it on the Mac. A refusal is never stored as the document’s text.
- Do pages go out if I never clicked anything?
- Only through a rule you set up yourself; it has a budget and stops at the limit.
- Can I go with no key and no cloud at all?
- Yes: Apple Intelligence on this Mac. The request never leaves the computer, the run costs nothing, and the log says exactly that. This model takes pages as images from macOS 27; before that version an action with images isn’t offered to it.
- Can I use my own server?
- Yes: a connection can point at your own server with a compatible API instead of a provider.
- Can I write my own prompt?
- Yes: duplicate a built-in one or start from an empty one — name, description, tags, wording. Name the connections it runs on, or leave it open to any.
- What runs without me?
- Rules only: a folder, a condition, an action and a budget. Actions run on a click, and prompts work only inside actions.
- Can I write my own action?
- Yes, in the AI Studio editor: assemble the steps, name the action, and it appears in the Finder menu. A built-in one can be duplicated and reshaped to fit you.