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Show HN: AI over Email

27 points by franze 2y ago

xyst 2y ago
In the day and age of shitty centralized platforms like FB or Reddit, I have fallen in love with email again. I manage my own mail server Thanks for doing this. Yet another tool I can use.
- xyproto 2y ago
  Which e-mail server software are you using?
  - xyst 2y ago
    Simple nixos mail server. Under the hood, it’s postfix + dovecot. ACME/Lego to obtain/manage cert from LetsEncrypt. Might migrate to Cyrus IMAP + postfix in the future for calendar support.
    - alan-hn 2y ago
      Does it sit behind a clean IP? Had any problems sending to gmail or other big providers?
      - xyst 2y ago
        I didn’t have a “clean” ip so most emails I sent went to spam. But was rectified after recipients marked as safe or “not spam” on their end. Not really an issue for me since I am not using it for mass marketing; and it’s just a personal email server. So just a single user (me). There were issues with block lists and outlook but was fixed after IP reset. Fortunately most of these services provide near instant feedback via mail protocol or bounced emails. Plus I have a metrics exported via Prometheus and feeding into influx db and grafana dashboard. Also fun to monitor Dovecot and postfix logs and get them into grafana. The number of script kiddies just sending random requests is fun to watch. Had a couple of instances where attacker was clearly trying to find a vulnerable user and try to use my server for spam or something else.
        alan-hn 2y ago
        I had a personal email server on linode for a while but a lot of my family uses gmail. Gmail wouldnt accept my emails and I ended up switching my domain to a commercial provider because it was such a pain in the ass. Never did mass emails or marketing, just my own personal use
        xyst 2y ago
        Besides getting sent to spam, I haven’t had deliverability issues to gmail. All I needed to do was setup my DKIM, SPF, DMARC records correctly. Confirmed with mail-tester.com I think linode may have had problems in the past with their assigned ip ranges being used as spam. Quickly looking into it, seems like they block outgoing email traffic by default now. But individual server owners need to manage IP rep.
        alan-hn 2y ago
        I did all the same things and even registered my domain with google and added their verification DNS txt record. You're probably right about it being linode's IP range, although I did get permission from linode to use it as a mail server, they opened the right ports and I did get deliverability to other mail hosts just not google or my university at the time, annoyingly enough
    - anotherhue 2y ago
      Stalwart is looking good https://github.com/stalwartlabs/mail-server https://github.com/stalwartlabs/mail-server https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=unstable&from=0&size=50&sort=alpha_asc&type=packages&query=stalwart https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=unstable&from=0&siz...
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  Email is by far the best way to interact 1 to 1 available online. I don’t care what anyone says. It’s not perfect but it just works.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Previous: Show HN: FranzAI – An AI Email Assistant that sits behind an Email-Address - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051185 - July 2024 (6 comments)
vzaliva 2y ago
This is a good idea, but it needs more use-cases. Besides helping to write or summarise emails, which is more convenient to do via an email client plugin, the only novel feature it offers is sending reminders. I want more! For example: 1. Managing my calendar and acting as a human PA, helping to negotiate meeting dates and possibly locations with several participants. 2. Taking over email threads (e.g. with customer support), answering on my behalf as much as it can, but escalating to me (a human) if needed. 3. FAQ mode – if I often receive emails with common queries and have to answer them repeatedly (e.g. invitations to give talks), it could handle those responses for me. etc.
- franze 2y ago
  thx the reminder and the memory finction (which can be used for task mamagement) yeah, a forward / reply and ticket/thread feature is the next step which would enable all that you said is the next step. which then enables all the complex behaviour of email interaction that you described. but probably would need to be a paid feature as otherwise there is too mich potential for spam miss-use. currently i do not plan any google calendar / other services integration. i want to mimik / support all email only workflow first. also I think users that will do enable these kind of integrations can use one of the 1000 meeting / calendar management tools anyway. i want to really mimic a virtual assistant that can only interact via email.
rado 2y ago
(Un)related: In the late 1990s, as a student I had no internet, only limited access to email at uni and used it to request film data from IMDb’s email service, saved it to a 5.25” floppy disk and examined it at home.
ko_pivot 2y ago
The integration you are doing between the LLM and a workflow engine is cool. Are you using something like Temporal or just a database plus a cron job?
mentos 2y ago
For me I’d like to self host this on my own domain so that I’m not sending sensitive work to a third party. ‘Franz pay this invoice with my CC ending in 1234’
orliesaurus 2y ago
I feel like this is what Gemini is gonna end up doing longer term right? How can it act on complex tasks that aren't as simple as the ones shown? Have you implemented function calling to achieve these feats. btw?

27 points by franze 2y ago

xyst 2y ago

In the day and age of shitty centralized platforms like FB or Reddit, I have fallen in love with email again. I manage my own mail server Thanks for doing this. Yet another tool I can use.

xyproto 2y ago
Which e-mail server software are you using?
- xyst 2y ago
  Simple nixos mail server. Under the hood, it’s postfix + dovecot. ACME/Lego to obtain/manage cert from LetsEncrypt. Might migrate to Cyrus IMAP + postfix in the future for calendar support.
  - alan-hn 2y ago
    Does it sit behind a clean IP? Had any problems sending to gmail or other big providers?
    - xyst 2y ago
      I didn’t have a “clean” ip so most emails I sent went to spam. But was rectified after recipients marked as safe or “not spam” on their end. Not really an issue for me since I am not using it for mass marketing; and it’s just a personal email server. So just a single user (me). There were issues with block lists and outlook but was fixed after IP reset. Fortunately most of these services provide near instant feedback via mail protocol or bounced emails. Plus I have a metrics exported via Prometheus and feeding into influx db and grafana dashboard. Also fun to monitor Dovecot and postfix logs and get them into grafana. The number of script kiddies just sending random requests is fun to watch. Had a couple of instances where attacker was clearly trying to find a vulnerable user and try to use my server for spam or something else.
      - alan-hn 2y ago
        I had a personal email server on linode for a while but a lot of my family uses gmail. Gmail wouldnt accept my emails and I ended up switching my domain to a commercial provider because it was such a pain in the ass. Never did mass emails or marketing, just my own personal use
        xyst 2y ago
        Besides getting sent to spam, I haven’t had deliverability issues to gmail. All I needed to do was setup my DKIM, SPF, DMARC records correctly. Confirmed with mail-tester.com I think linode may have had problems in the past with their assigned ip ranges being used as spam. Quickly looking into it, seems like they block outgoing email traffic by default now. But individual server owners need to manage IP rep.
        alan-hn 2y ago
        I did all the same things and even registered my domain with google and added their verification DNS txt record. You're probably right about it being linode's IP range, although I did get permission from linode to use it as a mail server, they opened the right ports and I did get deliverability to other mail hosts just not google or my university at the time, annoyingly enough
  - anotherhue 2y ago
    Stalwart is looking good https://github.com/stalwartlabs/mail-server https://github.com/stalwartlabs/mail-server https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=unstable&from=0&size=50&sort=alpha_asc&type=packages&query=stalwart https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=unstable&from=0&siz...
manuelmoreale 2y ago
Email is by far the best way to interact 1 to 1 available online. I don’t care what anyone says. It’s not perfect but it just works.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Previous: Show HN: FranzAI – An AI Email Assistant that sits behind an Email-Address - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051185 - July 2024 (6 comments)

vzaliva 2y ago

This is a good idea, but it needs more use-cases. Besides helping to write or summarise emails, which is more convenient to do via an email client plugin, the only novel feature it offers is sending reminders. I want more! For example: 1. Managing my calendar and acting as a human PA, helping to negotiate meeting dates and possibly locations with several participants. 2. Taking over email threads (e.g. with customer support), answering on my behalf as much as it can, but escalating to me (a human) if needed. 3. FAQ mode – if I often receive emails with common queries and have to answer them repeatedly (e.g. invitations to give talks), it could handle those responses for me. etc.

franze 2y ago
thx the reminder and the memory finction (which can be used for task mamagement) yeah, a forward / reply and ticket/thread feature is the next step which would enable all that you said is the next step. which then enables all the complex behaviour of email interaction that you described. but probably would need to be a paid feature as otherwise there is too mich potential for spam miss-use. currently i do not plan any google calendar / other services integration. i want to mimik / support all email only workflow first. also I think users that will do enable these kind of integrations can use one of the 1000 meeting / calendar management tools anyway. i want to really mimic a virtual assistant that can only interact via email.

rado 2y ago

(Un)related: In the late 1990s, as a student I had no internet, only limited access to email at uni and used it to request film data from IMDb’s email service, saved it to a 5.25” floppy disk and examined it at home.

ko_pivot 2y ago

The integration you are doing between the LLM and a workflow engine is cool. Are you using something like Temporal or just a database plus a cron job?

mentos 2y ago

For me I’d like to self host this on my own domain so that I’m not sending sensitive work to a third party. ‘Franz pay this invoice with my CC ending in 1234’

orliesaurus 2y ago

I feel like this is what Gemini is gonna end up doing longer term right? How can it act on complex tasks that aren't as simple as the ones shown? Have you implemented function calling to achieve these feats. btw?