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Ask HN: Would you use an app that turns emails into tasks and suggest replies?

by gaborme on 2/18/23, 2:36 PM with 7 comments

The idea is to create to-dos for each email and show reply suggestions. It will also detect who is responsible for the task.

A friend of mine had this idea for years, and with the latest AI, we built a prototype. It is a Gmail chrome extension for now.

Would you use this?

  • by nicbou on 2/19/23, 8:20 AM

    Most of the email I get was written by a human, and requires a thoughtful answer.

    However, I have to aggressively fight against not-quite-spam to keep my inbox clean. I'd love smarter filters that can remove terms of service updates, duplicate confirmation emails, work newsletters and the like.

    I'd also love to have email highlighted when the time is right. I'm constantly digging up meeting, flight and hotel booking emails on the day of the event.

    I'd love to see automatic calendar and maps links added next to each message when relevant.

    I say leave human communication to humans. Work on the problems that make them feel like machines.

  • by mitchellpkt on 2/19/23, 6:23 PM

    One of my previous jobs involved tracking a lot of threads across a lot of emails. It would have been handy if we had a private LLM that was trained/prompted to classify emails according to internal systems, like custom CRM stages.

    I would still read all my emails at the end of the day, but having important state changes (e.g. lead becoming qualified, or a time-sensitive ask from management) highlighted sooner would have been convenient.

  • by s1k3s on 2/18/23, 4:25 PM

    I do have this problem (as in, I receive tasks over email), but tbh the solution it's to just use a tool for task management (i.e. Jira). I would be curious to see how it works though, since some of my clients hate using management software and it's very hard to get them out of the email space.

  • by codingdave on 2/18/23, 4:43 PM

    My email inbox is already my to do list. I move things out or delete them when done. It seems like making me go to another system to just see a mirror of my inbox is not highly useful.

  • by Rev359a on 2/18/23, 6:04 PM

    This is a nice idea for businesses who heavily relying on emailss. Currently you can only create a task by drag dropping in all major email providers