Apple Documentation Research

When the guides Xcode bundles don't cover a question, this skill shows your assistant where else to look: the SDK's own declarations, Apple's full documentation as markdown through sosumi.ai, and WWDC session transcripts and code.

When to Use

Use this skill when you need:

• An API's exact declaration or availability for the SDK you build with
• Apple's documented behavior for an API the bundled Xcode guides don't cover
• The reasoning and recommended patterns behind an API, from a WWDC session
• A WWDC session's transcript or the code shown in it

It isn't for third-party frameworks, or for questions another Axiom skill already answers.

Example Prompts

Questions you can ask your assistant that will draw from this skill:

• "Is glassEffect available on visionOS, and what's its exact signature?"
• "What does Apple's documentation say about CLMonitor conditions?"
• "Get me the transcript and code from WWDC 2025 session 278."
• "How did the widget APIs change between iOS 17 and iOS 26?"

What This Skill Provides

• Choosing a source – the SDK's interfaces and headers for declarations and availability, sosumi.ai for documented behavior, a WWDC session for intent, and sample code for complete projects
• The SDK search – commands that search every Swift interface, including the standard library's, and every Objective-C header, since a symbol can live in a module other than the one you import, or only in a header
• sosumi.ai – the URL pattern that turns any developer.apple.com documentation link into fetchable markdown
• WWDC transcripts and code – Xcode's DocumentationSearch tool when it's available, how to read a session's Transcript and Code tabs, how to get English captions when a session has no transcript, and what to do when a page can't be opened
• Research workflows – answering an API question, researching a new feature, and tracing an API across releases
• Safeguards – never writing an API from memory or a transcript, never describing a session from memory, and never driving your own browser window

Key Pattern

Confirm every API in the SDK

A transcript or a memory of an API is a lead, not a fact. Before writing code, your assistant confirms the declaration in the SDK you build with:

SDK=$(xcrun --sdk iphoneos --show-sdk-path)
grep -n 'func glassEffect' "$SDK"/System/Library/Frameworks/*.framework/Modules/*.swiftmodule/*.swiftinterface \
  "$SDK"/usr/lib/swift/*.swiftmodule/*.swiftinterface
grep -n '@interface MKGeocodingRequest' "$SDK"/System/Library/Frameworks/*.framework/Headers/*.h

The first match comes from SwiftUICore, not SwiftUI, which is why the search covers every framework, plus usr/lib/swift, where the standard library and Swift overlays live. The second API is declared only in an Objective-C header, so a search of Swift interfaces alone would miss it.

Read Apple's documentation through sosumi.ai

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/widgetkit
https://sosumi.ai/documentation/widgetkit

The second URL serves the same page as markdown, which your assistant can fetch and quote. Framework names in the path are lowercase, with spaces and hyphens removed (appintents, not app-intents).

Documentation Scope

This page documents the apple-docs-research skill (in the axiom-apple-docs suite), which your assistant loads when Apple's bundled Xcode guides don't answer a question.

Related

• Apple Documentation Access – The router this skill belongs to, which reads the guides and compiler diagnostics Apple bundles inside Xcode
• Xcode MCP Tools – Its DocumentationSearch tool searches Apple's documentation and WWDC transcripts when the Xcode MCP bridge is available

Resources

WWDC: All sessions at developer.apple.com/videos

Docs: sosumi.ai/documentation