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Give Your MAUI Agent Hands — Contacts, Reminders & Location AI Tools

Jul 6, 2026

Allan Ritchie

One of the guys who builds this

When we shipped Shiny.Health.Extensions.AI, it proved a simple point: a chat model becomes far more useful when it can do things instead of just talk about them. Give it a tool to read step counts and “how did I sleep last week?” stops being a guess and starts being an answer pulled from the device.

So we did the same for three more device services. Three new packages expose Shiny modules as Microsoft.Extensions.AI tool functions:

Shiny.Contacts.Extensions.AI — search and manage the device address book
Shiny.Notifications.Extensions.AI — schedule and cancel reminders
Shiny.Locations.Extensions.AI — read-only GPS: where you are, and how far/long to somewhere else

They all follow the same shape as Health: you opt-in to exactly which operations the model can see (a read/write allow-list you control on behalf of the agent — not an OS permission prompt), it’s read-only by default, and the whole thing is IsAotCompatible — schemas are hand-built and results come back as JsonNode, so there’s no reflection in the tool path.

Contacts

dotnet add package Shiny.Contacts.Extensions.AI

builder.Services.AddContactStore();
builder.Services.AddContactsAITools(tools => tools
    .AddContacts(ContactAICapabilities.ReadWrite)   // Read is the default; ReadWrite adds create/update/delete
);

This generates search_contacts, get_contact, and — when you opt-in to Write — create_contact, update_contact, and delete_contact.

What you’d use it for: a personal-assistant or CRM-lite app where the user talks to the address book instead of tapping through it — “grab that number so I can text them,” “add the person on this business card,” “which of my contacts work at Acme?” The agent looks up an id with search_contacts, then acts on it.

Example questions:

“What’s Jane Doe’s mobile number?”
“Add a contact for my new dentist — Dr. Patel at Bright Smiles Dental, 555-0142.”
“Change my brother Mike’s email to mike@newjob.com.”
“Do I have anyone saved from Acme Corp?”
“Delete the contact for my old landlord.” (destructive — tell the model to confirm first)

Reminders

dotnet add package Shiny.Notifications.Extensions.AI

builder.Services.AddNotifications();
builder.Services.AddNotificationAITools(tools => tools
    .AddReminders(ReminderAICapabilities.ReadWrite, channel: "reminders")   // channel is optional
);

Local notifications, framed as reminders. You get list_reminders, and — with Write — create_reminder (fire now, at a specific date/time, or daily at a set time) and cancel_reminder.

What you’d use it for: any “remind me…” flow in a chat assistant — todo apps, habit and medication trackers, follow-up nudges. The user speaks a reminder in natural language and the model schedules a real local notification; scheduleFor and repeatDailyAt cover one-shot and recurring.

Example questions:

“Remind me to call the plumber at 3pm today.”
“Set a daily reminder to take my meds at 8:30am.”
“What reminders do I have set?”
“Cancel the one about the dentist.”
“Nudge me to water the plants every evening at 6.”

Location

dotnet add package Shiny.Locations.Extensions.AI

builder.Services.AddGps();
builder.Services.AddLocationAITool();   // read-only — there's no write capability for GPS

GPS is read-only, so there’s no builder to configure — a single AddLocationAITool() registers get_current_location, get_distance_to, and estimate_travel_time. The agent can learn where the user is and reason about distance and rough travel time to a destination.

What you’d use it for: travel and field-service apps, delivery/ETA estimates, “am I near…” checks, or any assistant that should be location-aware. One honest caveat baked into the tools: distances are great-circle (straight-line) and travel times use an assumed average speed — the results say so in a note field, so the model caveats its answer rather than pretending to be a routing engine.

Example questions:

“Where am I right now?”
“How far is it from here to 51.4700, -0.4543?”
“Roughly how long to cycle to the park at 51.51, -0.12?”
“Am I within 2 km of the office?”
“What’s my current speed and heading?”

Compose them into one agent

Each package hands you a small bundle you resolve from DI. Concatenate their .Tools and pass the lot to any IChatClient:

var tools = new List<AITool>();
tools.AddRange(sp.GetRequiredService<ContactAITools>().Tools);
tools.AddRange(sp.GetRequiredService<NotificationAITools>().Tools);
tools.AddRange(sp.GetRequiredService<LocationAITools>().Tools);

var response = await chatClient.GetResponseAsync(
    messages,
    new ChatOptions { Tools = tools }
);

Now a single message can fan out across all three:

“I’m meeting Sarah at the office at 5 — how far am I, and remind me to leave in an hour.”

The model calls search_contacts for Sarah if it needs her details, get_distance_to for the office, and create_reminder for the nudge — one turn, three device services.

Permissions still belong to your app

The capability builders (AddContacts(...), AddReminders(...)) are an allow-list for the agent — they decide which operations the model can see. They are not an OS permission prompt. The underlying platform permission must already be granted: call IContactStore.RequestAccess, INotificationManager.RequestAccess, or start a GPS listener from your app before you invoke the agent. The tools assume access is in place and return a clean error object if it isn’t.

Get started

dotnet add package Shiny.Contacts.Extensions.AI
dotnet add package Shiny.Notifications.Extensions.AI
dotnet add package Shiny.Locations.Extensions.AI

Full details on each: Contacts AI Tools, Reminder AI Tools, and Location AI Tools. Same pattern as Health AI Tools — opt-in, read-only by default, AOT-safe, and now your agent has hands.