Neal Spangler

Work Automation & AI

Voice memos from my watch become sorted task cards

I dictate tasks on my watch and send them through Slack to Trello. The service saves each memo first, checks for duplicates and uses my vault context to suggest the right list.

Pebble smartwatch
Pebble smartwatch Photo: Pebble Technology, CC BY-SA 1.0
59offline checks in the test harness
0tools the sorting model can use
15 minhead start before the AI sorts a memo

The problem

The watch app resends when it misses a reply, and Slack or Trello can be unavailable. I needed to save memos through outages, check retries for duplicates and sort cards without giving the model board access.

What I did

  • A relay from the watch app through a private Slack channel, so memos arrive from any network without opening a port in the office.
  • A service that saves each memo to SQLite before making the card. On retries it searches for the memo's ID to avoid posting it twice.
  • Voice commands that message a coworker in Slack from my watch, with duplicate checks and an hourly cap. Late commands become task cards instead.
  • An isolated Claude call proposes a list using context from my notes vault. Code checks the proposal against my rules and skips low-confidence calls.
  • An offline test harness with fake Slack and Trello services, covering duplicates, floods, stale commands and memo text leaking into logs.
Voice memo pipeline A memo dictated on the watch is relayed through a private Slack channel to a service that saves it to SQLite before anything else, then creates one Trello card. An isolated AI step with no tools sorts the card into a list, and leaves it in place when unsure. Voice commands use duplicate checks and an hourly cap before sending a Slack message to a coworker. Watch dictation Slack relay private channel Memo service saved to SQLite Trello card one per memo AI sort no tools, capped voice command: checked Slack message unsure: stays put Save the memo, then check its ID
Each memo is saved first. Retries check its ID before creating a card.

What I took from it

Dictation mishears names, and I'd rather a memo wait than a message reach the wrong person. A command sends only when the name matches a known coworker. Anything unclear becomes a card.

Automation & AI

AI agents with command limits and approval checks

Claude Code and Codex handle remote tasks with approval checks and command-blocking rules enforced outside the model.

Automation & AI

An Obsidian runbook with a nightly AI filing job

818 Obsidian notes in Git, with a nightly AI job adding links and existing-note edits reverted.
Privacy