For a given Beurling–Carleson subset E of the unit circle T which has positive Lebesgue measure, we give explicit formulas for measurable functions supported on E such that their Cauchy transforms have smooth extensions from D to T. The existence of such functions has been previously established by Khrushchev in 1978, in non-constructive ways by the use of duality arguments. We construct several families of such smooth Cauchy transforms and apply them in a few related problems in analysis: an irreducibility problem for the shift operator, an inner factor permanence problem. Our development leads to a self-contained duality proof of the density of smooth functions in a very large class of de Branges–Rovnyak spaces. This extends the previously known approximation results.