The Assistant

The Assistant turns notes and handwriting into next actions and answers questions about your project’s cards. It is free and runs on the Apple Intelligence model on your device; nothing goes to a cloud service. It never creates a card by itself: you review every suggestion and decide what to create.

Where to find it

• On Mac: click the sparkles button (Project Assistant) in the toolbar. The right column switches to Assistant; the control at its top switches between Inspector and Assistant.
• On iPad: the Assistant sits in the lower part of the right column, below the inspector. Show the column with the Inspector button.
• On iPhone: the sparkles button in the header opens the Assistant as a sheet.

Inside a project, the sparkles button in the project header opens it too. At the top of the Assistant you choose Chat or Note.

Chat about your project

1. Choose a project or a list in the picker at the top.
2. Type a question in Ask about this project…, for example “Which cards are still open?”, and choose Send.
3. The answer lists its sources: each card with its list, status and due date. Tap a source to open that card.

The chat reads only card titles, lists, status and due dates in the chosen project or list, not notes or attachments. It handles up to 40 cards; for bigger projects, choose a single list. A question can be up to 2,000 characters. New Conversation (the circular arrow) starts over.

If the answer proposes new cards, choose Review Proposed Cards. At first nothing is selected: switch on the cards you want, edit their titles, choose a list and choose Create Selected. Undo next to a created card removes it again. The More menu (…) offers Search cards, Add Card Manually and Created Cards.

Turn a note into cards

1. Switch to Note and paste your text. Or choose Suggest Cards at a project’s outcome or plan section to bring that text along.
2. Choose Suggest Cards. You get up to eight suggestions, each shown with the passage of your note it is based on.
3. Switch on the suggestions you want, edit titles if needed, choose a list and choose Create Selected.

Nothing is saved before you choose Create Selected. Created cards appear under Created Cards with Undo, which stays available while the window is open. Undo deletes a card only if you haven’t changed it since.

Very long notes (more than 12,000 bytes) are rejected: choose a shorter section. Nothing is cut off silently. Add Card Manually always works, even when the model isn’t available.

Handwriting as a source

Page to Assistant in a journal and Board to Assistant in a sketch’s inspector send the page or board to the Assistant. iKanban reads the handwriting on your device and opens Note with the image and the Recognized text. Correct the text if needed, then choose Suggest Cards. Cards created this way note where they came from, for example “Journal: Ideas, page 3”. If no writing is recognized, you see a hint and can type the text yourself. See Journals and Sketches.

Requirements

The Assistant needs a device that supports Apple Intelligence, Apple Intelligence turned on in Settings, a local model that is ready, and a language the model supports. If something is missing, the Assistant says what, for example “Enable Apple Intelligence in Settings to use local suggestions.”

On Mac: the Assistant column also has Open Siri, which starts Apple’s Siri separately. Siri is not part of the iKanban Assistant.