Apple brings an AI assistant and MCP to Pages, Keynote, Numbers
A beta assistant built on Apple models and OpenAI drafts and designs inside iWork apps, while a new MCP server and an open Keynote file format let outside tools in.
Apple announced on 27 October that Keynote, Pages and Numbers are getting an intelligent assistant, built on Apple’s own models and OpenAI’s. In Pages it drafts, restructures and fine-tunes text. In Keynote it designs, animates and refines slides. In Numbers it recommends chart types with a one-tap preview and builds custom tables. It is beta, US English only, and needs a device running iOS 27, iPadOS 27 or macOS 27.
The detail that matters more than the assistant: macOS 27 also brings MCP support to all three apps, letting external AI agents and tools read, edit and run automated actions directly inside Keynote, Pages and Numbers files. Keynote additionally gains an open JSON-based bundle format, Keynote Interchange (.keyx), designed to be readable by outside tools, developer workflows and agents rather than only Apple’s own apps. The update ships free to existing Apple Creator Studio subscribers in November; the subscription itself is $12.99 a month or $129 a year.
Why it matters: iWork has been a closed format for twenty years. An agent-readable Keynote file and a standing MCP server mean a script, a CI job or a coding agent can now generate or edit a presentation, a document or a spreadsheet without going through Apple’s UI, which previously was not possible.
The caveat: the assistant itself sits behind the Creator Studio subscription, not the free iWork apps, and both it and MCP support are beta and US English only for now.