3 Paws product case study
Peek: useful AI without sending your reading to a server.
Peek is an iPhone summarizer for the things people actually encounter during the day: articles, links, photos, PDFs, copied text, and highlighted selections. The product is designed around a simple constraint—when on-device intelligence can do the job, the user's content should stay on the device.
Published · 3 Paws product case study
At a glance
- Product
- Peek
- Platform
- iPhone
- Role
- Product design, iOS development, release, and ongoing product ownership by 3 Paws AI Studio
- Focus
- On-device AI, multi-input workflows, privacy, Share Sheet integration, App Store product delivery
- Built with
- SwiftUI, SwiftData, Apple's Foundation Models framework (Apple Intelligence, on-device), a Share Extension, PDFKit, Vision, StoreKit with RevenueCat
- Business model
- Free tier, with a Pro upgrade at US$25/year
The product challenge
Summarization is easy to demo and harder to make genuinely useful. People do not only want to summarize a clean web article. They encounter information in browser links, screenshots, printed material, PDFs, messages, notes, and text selected inside other apps.
The product therefore needed to solve two problems at once: make summarization reachable from several everyday iPhone workflows, and keep the privacy story understandable enough that a user could trust it without reading an architecture document.
The approach
Peek brings several input paths into one consistent summary experience. A user can share a link, capture or choose an image, open a PDF, paste text, or send highlighted content through the iOS Share Sheet. Each source can produce different levels of summary—Brief, TL;DR, or bullets—while history and favorites remain local to the device.
The key product decision is that summarization runs with Apple's on-device intelligence rather than routing the user's source content through a 3 Paws summarization server. That decision shapes both the experience and the product's privacy position: nothing the user summarizes leaves the device.
What the work demonstrates
Platform integration
Designing a useful workflow around the iOS Share Sheet and multiple types of incoming content.
On-device AI product design
Using device intelligence where it creates a meaningful privacy and latency advantage rather than adding AI as decoration.
Input normalization
Turning links, images, PDFs, and text into a consistent user-facing summarization flow.
Privacy as a product constraint
Making the data model and product promise understandable to users, not just technically compliant.
Shipping discipline
Moving from product concept through implementation, monetization, App Store packaging, support, and iteration.
Shipped outcome
Peek is live as a real App Store product with a free tier and paid upgrade, rather than remaining a prototype. For prospective contract clients, the relevant proof is end-to-end ownership: product definition, native mobile execution, platform integration, privacy decisions, monetization, release, and ongoing support.
Need help shipping an iOS feature with similar constraints?
3 Paws is available for senior iOS contract work and focused development sprints.