Building an Automator action in Xcode

If you're used to AppleScript and would like to build your own actions, the building blocks of Automator workflows, MacNN has an excellent introduction. Author Benjamin Waldie takes you step-by-step through a simple action. As a bonus, that action includes a list of possible inputs. A handy step to include, as workflows are most powerful when you modify their output based on input at runtime. This was a component sorely lacking from a particular action I was working on a few weeks ago. I have disliked Automator in the past, but only because I prefer AppleScript. This tutorial helped me sort of bridge the gap between the two. Now I can build more reusable code in AppleScripts, and put those in actions to use in better workflows.