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Gmailtail – Command-line tool to monitor Gmail messages and output them as JSON

144 points7 monthsgithub.com
3r7j6qzi9jvnve7 months ago

This just polls every x (default 30) seconds; if you use IMAP you can do better with IDLE (e.g. I pipe `fetchmail --check` to something that triggers a sync to immediately get new mails)

_flux7 months ago

I wonder though if also the Gmail interface supports something like this? It seems it's pretty fast at receiving email.

kosolam7 months ago

There is this generic tool: https://github.com/pimalaya/himalaya

toomuchtodo7 months ago

Himalaya: CLI to Manage Emails - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42366025 - December 2024 (97 comments)

jrop7 months ago

Thanks for this! Exactly what I was looking for.

dataflow7 months ago

There are pub/sub notifications but it's a bit of a pain to get working. You need an HTTP endpoint the server can reach for push notifications, I think, not long polling.

kevincox7 months ago

The GMail web client definitely doesn't create an HTTP endpoint to receive updates. But the API it uses is likely proprietary and private (even if it was built on top of the public API there would be a backend bridging the two)

dataflow7 months ago

Sorry, yes, my comment was confusing. I was answering the "how do I get faster notifications in a supported manner" part rather than the "how does the Gmail web UI do this" part.

love2read7 months ago

What tool makes these readme’s for new github repos that are bulletpointed lists with features, always prefixed by an emoji?

sunrunner7 months ago

I think this trend has been around for a while now (it started to become more noticable for me at least a couple of years ago).

At first there seemed to be a correlation between how 'cool' the project was and the number of emoji, but now it seems like it's as expected as just having a README itself.

I've definitely seen _more_ decorated READMEs, and I can't help but feel like there's an inverse correlation between emoji count and readability.

diggan7 months ago

Not specifically about readmes/GitHub repos, but I've noticed some LLMs like Sonnet and GPT4.1 are really enthusiastic about doing emoji-prefixed lists for some reason.

dewey7 months ago

Trained on too many JS libraries.

aritrogh7 months ago

Not necessarily a helpful thing, In fact I think that we were to use this to create dynamic prompts then it increases exponentially

username1357 months ago

When ever I see tons of emojis in a list/faq/readme I first think of LLM output.

jdironman7 months ago

I do as well when I see:

# Code Comments Every Few Lines

vanrohan7 months ago

It's probably LLM generated. Adding a fun/cool factor to the project. I created a Chrome Extension where you can "emojify" any text with a right-click. https://emoji-bot.com

maximevalette7 months ago

Basically any LLM

yapyap7 months ago

AI, I presume (but I’m not sure) that the code “agent” they are using creates it.

bravesoul27 months ago

Tool is an insult when applied to a human...

edm0nd7 months ago

[flagged]

basemi7 months ago

If I read it right, it's built on Gmail API

Are there any other provider agnostic tools with similar capabilities?

szszrk7 months ago

I guess JMAP was created to also deal with this. I'm not sure how far are we in implementation on clients side.

https://jmap.io/spec.html

MangoToupe7 months ago

I can't imagine google ever supporting something that useful.

fastasucan7 months ago
worldsayshi7 months ago

Is there any good library or tool that let's me programmatically/easily or semi-automatically delete mail by query in gmail? The built in tools are not good enough. Does Thunderbird work with gmail nowadays?

jamespo7 months ago
jeffbee7 months ago

Easily done in Google Apps Script.

nathants7 months ago

Just have SES put the email in s3, then do stuff.

gsibble7 months ago

Oh yeah, I'd love to hold on to people's emails and be responsible if they got leaked.

nathants7 months ago

TTL=1day

nisegami7 months ago

One step closer to fully closing the loop on using LLMs to automate white collar work.

rubslopes7 months ago

Is it just me, or is there a trend to make modern web applications accessible on the terminal?

slantaclaus7 months ago

“a resurgence with new tooling and polish”