Use your calendar and inbox to protect focus time

A developer made a quiet agent that checks calendar time against goals, then began adding email triage when users wanted more automation.

Done with Custom agentยท Intermediate

What they did
The developer was spending a lot of time manually keeping Google Calendar aligned with schoolwork, a thesis, internships, and hackathons. To reduce that overhead, they built a small background agent that compares scheduled blocks with their actual aims and stays mostly invisible while it runs. After early adopters pushed for more help, they started working on a Gmail agent, along with extra tools for blocking distracting sites during focus periods and a Chrome extension.
How it went
The post only describes feedback, not measurements. Several early adopters wanted the system to do more, which led to the Gmail work and the add-ons for focus support.
Tips
Start with one narrow job, such as checking whether calendar events match your priorities, before expanding into inbox handling or blocking tools. For anything that changes email or deletes content, require a review step first.

Try it yourself with Dots

Each morning, look at my [calendar] and my current goals: [goal 1], [goal 2], [goal 3]. Tell me which events help those goals, which seem unrelated, and suggest one block of time I should reserve for the top priority. Then review my [Gmail] inbox, sort out routine noise like promotions and newsletters, and list the messages that likely need my reply. Show me all send, delete, archive, unsubscribe, or submit actions for approval before you do them.

Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.

Read the original on reddit.com โ†—

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