Apple Reminders Safe

Safe Apple Reminders

Use apple-reminders-safe as the policy boundary for Apple Reminders. It calls the verified native helper locally on macOS and reaches sourya-mac through bounded SSH from GCP. Do not invoke the native helper directly for normal work.

Safety rules

• Treat status, authorization, reads, and writes as separate actions. A pre-existing full-access TCC state does not authorize an agent to read or change reminders.
• Keep reminder contents out of Git, task artifacts, reusable caches, and broad logs. Exact reads and previews may exist only in the user's machine-local state.
• Require one explicit list ID for create and list moves. Never choose a default list implicitly.
• Preserve every field omitted from an update. Use explicit clear entries to remove supported optional fields.
• Preview every write and obtain approval for its exact approvalHash before apply.
• Delete only one exact reminder, only after a fresh preview, and only with the preview's separate DELETE:<local-id> confirmation. Do not delete a live fixture.
• Reject list creation, rename, deletion, bulk writes, bulk deletes, and broad exports.
• Report Mac offline, SSH failure, fetch timeout, TCC state, hard-cap truncation, ambiguous identity, and unverified cloud freshness. Never interpret these states as an empty result.
• Passive Deep Feed collection is read-only. It must never call create, update, complete, reopen, or delete.

Check health and permission

Run:

apple-reminders-safe status

The response must show macReachable, the exact tccStatus, fetchComplete, truncated, and cloudFreshness. cloudFreshness remains unverified because EventKit does not prove that iCloud sync is current.

Do not trigger a macOS permission request without separate user approval. First save a permission preview outside any repository:

mkdir -p ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews
apple-reminders-safe authorize-preview \
  --output ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/authorize.json

Show the exact currentTccStatus, willPrompt, bundle identifier, expiry, and approvalHash. After explicit approval, apply only that unexpired preview:

apple-reminders-safe authorize \
  --preview ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/authorize.json \
  --approval-hash '<exact-hash>'

If status is already full-access, this command should not prompt. The user approval still gates first use. If status is denied, restricted, or write-only, stop and guide the user through macOS Privacy & Security rather than bypassing TCC.

Read workflow

List Reminder lists with a bound:

apple-reminders-safe lists --limit 100

Search results redact note text. Use an exact read only after selecting one result:

apple-reminders-safe search --query 'renew' --limit 25
apple-reminders-safe get --local-id '<calendarItemIdentifier>'

An external ID lookup must include the exact list ID:

apple-reminders-safe get \
  --external-id '<calendarItemExternalIdentifier>' \
  --list-id '<list-id>'

Create and update workflow

Keep request and preview files under ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/, mode 0600, never in a repository. A create request uses one explicit list and may include title, notes, URL, due state, priority, simple recurrence, and alarms:

{
  "listId": "<exact-list-id>",
  "title": "ZON-325 self-only Reminders fixture",
  "due": {
    "kind": "timed",
    "value": "2026-09-18T09:00:00",
    "timeZone": "America/Los_Angeles"
  }
}

Preview it:

apple-reminders-safe create-preview \
  --input ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/requests/create.json \
  --output ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/create.json

For an update, include only fields to set, fields to clear, and an explicit move target when needed:

{
  "set": {"title": "Updated title"},
  "clear": [],
  "moveToListId": "<exact-list-id>"
}

apple-reminders-safe update-preview \
  --local-id '<local-id>' \
  --patch ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/requests/update.json \
  --output ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/update.json

Before asking for approval, show the exact list, title, notes-change digest, due kind and timezone, all-day or floating state, priority, completion, recurrence, alarms, URL, last modified value, diff, expiry, and approval hash. System-generated creation, modification, and completion timestamps are explicitly marked as set by EventKit on apply.

Apply one approved preview:

apple-reminders-safe apply \
  --preview ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/update.json \
  --approval-hash '<exact-hash>'

The wrapper rereads the reminder, rejects drift, applies only the previewed operation, rereads for verification, and writes a content-free machine-local audit record.

Complete, reopen, and delete

Use the same exact-target workflow:

apple-reminders-safe complete-preview --local-id '<local-id>' \
  --output ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/complete.json
apple-reminders-safe reopen-preview --local-id '<local-id>' \
  --output ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/reopen.json
apple-reminders-safe delete-preview --local-id '<local-id>' \
  --output ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/delete.json

Deletion needs both the approval hash and exact destructive token:

apple-reminders-safe apply \
  --preview ~/.local/state/apple-reminders-safe/previews/delete.json \
  --approval-hash '<exact-hash>' \
  --confirm-destructive 'DELETE:<local-id>'

Deep Feed collection

The owner-only Deep Feed collector may request bounded pages with full notes:

apple-reminders-safe collect-page \
  --limit 100 \
  --owner-only-deep-feed

Follow nextCursor until truncated is false. A partial, timed-out, offline, denied, or truncated final scan is not authoritative and must leave source health visibly degraded. Do not enable recurring collection until Sourya separately approves the all-list, all-open, notes-copy, and scheduling policy.

Native installation

The native helper source is under macos/apple-reminders-native/. On sourya-mac, first install with:

install-apple-reminders-native

The installer builds with Swift, ad-hoc signs the fixed bundle identifier, records a mode-0600 hash manifest, and installs at a fixed path. Rebuilds can change the code requirement, so replacement requires explicit --replace and may require a new TCC grant. Never copy TCC databases or iCloud credentials to GCP.