TL;DR we're building a unified UX / API / SDK / VM all around the concept of "inbox". Not just bolting AI on to search / draft / send.
First its a question of the shape of a product. There are a few paradigms:
1. Keep AI far away from my email
2. Side bar chat in email app
3. Chat app that can interact with email
4. Fully autonomous email agents
I don't like 4. At its core, real email is person to person communications, and we want to keep humans in the loop and actually writing thoughtful messages back and forth.
3 is here to stay, but I don't think most people actually want to free form chat or vibe code their day to day communications long term.
We can expect 2 in pretty much every SaaS but so far I'm underwhelmed by many experiences. An agent only truly works when it has great tools, and not many email providers or apps have great APIs or higher level tools and primitives other than "draft" and "send".
So first we're working on great tools for the human. Common templates, dynamic folders and labels, context from your CRM, integrated tools for your other workspace tools, easy ways to code customizations and workflows.
Next we're equipping the agent with the same tools to help you, only when you want it to.
We started as a hosted claw of sorts. But the less technical folks wanted something more than chats and markdown to do their work.
We then added a modern todo list interface. Having the agent create and update action items from email and Slack turns out to be genuinely useful, but having another TODO list to check wasn't as useful.
So we landed back on an email inbox. Having your actual email to work on, plus the "inbox" to also home other tasks and chats from the agent, is feeling very productive.
makes a lot of sense to me. I used to work in finance and we spend the vast majority of our time in email. it’s the universal communication interface between any company / advisor. excited to try it!
How does this compare to the other emails apps that are all adding ai?
TL;DR we're building a unified UX / API / SDK / VM all around the concept of "inbox". Not just bolting AI on to search / draft / send.
First its a question of the shape of a product. There are a few paradigms:
1. Keep AI far away from my email
2. Side bar chat in email app
3. Chat app that can interact with email
4. Fully autonomous email agents
I don't like 4. At its core, real email is person to person communications, and we want to keep humans in the loop and actually writing thoughtful messages back and forth.
3 is here to stay, but I don't think most people actually want to free form chat or vibe code their day to day communications long term.
We can expect 2 in pretty much every SaaS but so far I'm underwhelmed by many experiences. An agent only truly works when it has great tools, and not many email providers or apps have great APIs or higher level tools and primitives other than "draft" and "send".
So first we're working on great tools for the human. Common templates, dynamic folders and labels, context from your CRM, integrated tools for your other workspace tools, easy ways to code customizations and workflows.
Next we're equipping the agent with the same tools to help you, only when you want it to.
is the right way to think of Housecat kinda like Hermes Agent under the hood with an email interface?
Yes that's a good way to think about it.
We started as a hosted claw of sorts. But the less technical folks wanted something more than chats and markdown to do their work.
We then added a modern todo list interface. Having the agent create and update action items from email and Slack turns out to be genuinely useful, but having another TODO list to check wasn't as useful.
So we landed back on an email inbox. Having your actual email to work on, plus the "inbox" to also home other tasks and chats from the agent, is feeling very productive.
makes a lot of sense to me. I used to work in finance and we spend the vast majority of our time in email. it’s the universal communication interface between any company / advisor. excited to try it!
We're thinking and designing with number of finance / VC / PE types. This is where the durable workflows can really help.
I wouldn't trust a agent chat or SKILL.md for numbers just yet.
But I would trust having a coding agent code the workflow, then have real people review the code, operate the tool, and double check the numbers.