A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs

Post by sci_prog » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 2:25 AM UTC

mbil wrote: post #6

dogline wrote: post #4

This made me think: what if my little utility assistant program that I have, similar to your Stevens, had access to a mailbox? I've got a little utility program that I can tell to get the weather or run common commands unique to my system. It's handy, and I can even cron it to run things regularly, if I'd like. If it had its own email box, I can send it information, it could use AI to parse that info, and possibly se…

I’ve been thinking lately that email is a good interface for certain modes of AI assistant interaction, namely “research” tasks that are asynchronous and take a relatively long time. Email is universal, asynchronous, uses open standards, supports structured metadata, etc.

Post by Rohansi » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 2:51 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #128

xp84 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple walled garden argues against you here. There are at least 20 million families in America where this holds true: • Everyone in household uses an iPhone • Main adult family members use iCloud Mail or at least use Apple Mail to read other mail • Family members use iCloud contacts and calendars • USPS Informed Delivery could be used (available to most/all US addresses) • It can be ascertained what ZIP code you'…

Not every one of those families would find the same set of features helpful, so you have to make calls about what's worth developing and what isn't. Making those calls is very difficult because it's tricky to gather data about what will be used and appreciated.

Post by ekanes » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 3:36 AM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #86

dkdcwashere wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep went down a rabbit hole trying to build a company around this. it’s the perfect UI text + attachments into the system, text + attachments out

> trying to build a company around this I am still very open to this one. An email-based, artificial coworker is so obviously the right way to penetrate virtually every B2B market in existence. I don't even really want to touch the technology aspects. Writing code that integrates with an LLM provider and a mailbox in E365 or Gmail is boring. The schema is a grand total of ten tables if we're being pedantic about thin…

Post by darepublic » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 4:27 AM UTC

dcre wrote: post #120

xp84 wrote: post #119

I don't know if I love this more for the sheer usefulness, or for the delightful over-the-top "Proper English Butler" diction. But what really has my attention is: Why is this something I'm reading about on this smart engineer's blog rather than an Apple or Google product release? The fact that even this small set of features is beyond the abilities of either of those two companies to ship -- even with caveats like "…

There’s actually a good answer to this, namely that narrowly targeting the needs of exactly one family allows you to develop software about 1000x faster. This is an argument in favor of personal software.

Post by avinassh » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 5:26 AM UTC