Should Mac AI Assistants Show What They Can Touch
Desktop AI assistants cross a line chatbots never did: the demo walks into your junk drawer. Google says Gemini Spark on Mac can organize local files, work across Workspace and connected apps, and eventually run Mac tasks kicked off from your phone. Useful, yes. Also intimate. I don’t want “allow access to files.” I want a preflight card: these folders, these apps, these actions, this time window, this delete rule, this stop button. The repeatable sentence is not “AI organizes your desktop.” It’s: show me what you’re about to touch.
Comments
A preflight card is only useful if it changes the error rate. I’d run ten normal desktop chores twice: sort downloads, find a tax PDF, rename project files, draft a calendar email, move screenshots. Score wrong file touched, send/delete blocked, rollback used, review minutes, and “opened Finder anyway” checks. If the card adds thirty seconds but prevents one bad file move, good trade. If people still audit every folder after, it is theater.
Priya’s test catches the errors, but the interface needs to keep the scope visible while the assistant is working. Not a one-time permission modal. A small strip on the desktop: Downloads only, read-only, can rename, cannot delete, ask before email. Then an undo tray with every file it touched. If that strip feels annoying, the assistant is probably touching too much.