Comment by turnsout

Comment by turnsout 2 days ago

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Yeah, I looked at Clawdbot / OpenClaw at the beginning of the week (Monday), but the token use scared me off.

But I was inspired to use Claude Code to create my own personal assistant. It was shocking to see CC bang out an MVP in one Plan execution. I've been iterating it all week, but I've had it be careful with token usage. It defaults to Haiku (more than enough for things like email categorization), properly uses prompt caching, and has a focused set of tools to avoid bloating the context window. The cost is under $1 per check-in, which I'm okay with.

Now I get a morning and afternoon check-in about outstanding items, and my Inbox is clear. I can see this changing my relationship to email completely.

azinman2 2 days ago

Post it!

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  • turnsout 2 days ago

    A lot of the system prompt, skills and tools center around my specific needs (I manage separate IMAP and Gmail inboxes, use Granola, and have iCloud calendars). And there are some hard assumptions baked in (I want to have a morning & afternoon check-in). It probably wouldn't be useful as-is, but maybe as inspiration?

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    • browningstreet 2 days ago

      I'd love to see even a filtered version of it. I've been doing very similar things with an "everything" database. That's been my own personal northstar.

      BTW, OpenCode has free Kimi (I haven't hit a quota yet) right now and it's done pretty great things for me in the last 24 hours.

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      • turnsout 2 days ago

        Oh interesting—how do you find OpenCode vs CC? I'll check it out. And I'll try to get a version of this assistant in a form I could share publicly.

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        • browningstreet 2 days ago

          They're neck and neck for me, in terms of PRDs, coding, and web searching. CC built the bulk of my current project, I did a lot of analysis of it with Antigravity (the interface is esp good for reviewing/commenting on long .md output files) and then, after building a simple roadmap of v2 features, OpenCode + Kimi was the most aggressive about running in a fairly autonomous manner and finishing the items on said roadmap. OC was also pretty hardcore about misinterpreting a limit I expressed earlier in one context as a limitation in another context -- which was fine, I'd rather say "no, really, you can go do that, I'm giving you permission and here's what I meant before" than find out it was too brazen.

          It's a lot like managing two experienced mid- to sr- engineers each of whom have slightly different personalities and intro/extro verted personalities. CC has more personality but OC wants to race. They can both code, but for disparate tasks you might pick the personality and posture of one person over the other.

          I find myself picking daily tasks based on which of the tools I'm in the mood to sit with. But across a few days I sit with all three.

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    • RickS 2 days ago

      If it was oneshotted, I'd be curious to see the prompt

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      • turnsout 2 days ago

        I wouldn't say it was oneshotted, but it did produce a working MVP in one Plan execution. Meaning, I went back & forth a few times about requirements, it built a plan, and then CC spent just under 15 minutes writing the code. Once I got the credentials plugged in, the core integrations (Slack, gmail, IMAP, iCloud calendar) and agent loop did work. I can share the initial message if you're curious.

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