Brief.
A personal administrative-health dashboard: in ten seconds, what needs attention, why it matters, and what to do next, from your own Gmail and Calendar.
IN PLAIN ENGLISH
What this is.
Brief is a read-only administrative-health dashboard. It looks at Gmail and Google Calendar metadata and reduces the day to the few decisions that actually need attention.
01 / THE PROBLEM
The expensive tasks are often the invisible ones.
A bill passes its due date, a reply goes cold, or a form expires without making much noise. Another list to maintain does not solve that. Brief reads what already exists and surfaces the small number of things that need a person today.
02 / HOW IT WORKS
Three decisions out, not another inbox.
Brief uses read-only Gmail and Calendar scopes. It sends message metadata, never bodies, to a model that proposes signals tied to source messages. Plain code validates, filters, ranks, and limits the result to three. The calendar view shows today, committed waking time, and the next fortnight.
03 / ENGINEERING DECISIONS
Facts and inferences stay visibly separate.
Every signal carries a source fact, a model inference, confidence, and a link back to the original message. Unknown message IDs are discarded. Numbers in a fact line are checked against the source; unsupported claims are clamped down. The model has no tools and sees email as untrusted data.
04 / WHERE IT STANDS
The fallback is part of the product.
Three providers share one entry point: local Ollama, Claude CLI, and a deterministic keyword scanner. If a provider is unavailable or unparseable, the fallback still renders the home screen. The build is focused on one person and read-only inputs, not automated action.
THE HONEST VERSION
What I am actually counting.
Brief is designed around an absence: it cannot send mail, call APIs, or take action. It can only return candidate signals for server code to validate and a person to decide on.
TRY IT
Try the interaction.
TRY IT · DAILY BRIEFING
Six fictional inbox messages. This runs Brief’s deterministic fallback, not a mailbox connection.
TOOLS AND CONSTRAINTS
- Gmail read-only
- Google Calendar read-only
- Ollama
- Claude CLI
- Schema validation