morning-life-digest

name	morning-life-digest
description	Generate the morning life-channel Slack digest — fetch unread Gmail, query next-24h Calendar across all known accounts, filter for "important" items, post to

Morning Life Digest

Class-level workflow for the life:daily-important-email-calendar-8am cron (~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json, id 85a468088e16, schedule 0 9 * * *, deliver: "origin" → #life / C0AMM2B4319) and any future variant.

When to use

• The life:daily-important-email-calendar-8am cron fires (this skill IS the canonical handler)
• A user asks for a "morning brief", "what's on my plate today", or "important email + calendar digest"
• Any life:*-style cron that fetches Gmail + Calendar and posts to Slack (not the fixed-reminder life:* crons like cindil-protein-reminder or honda-civic-dmv-setup-hourly — those are static text)

Workflow

1. Pre-flight: confirm cron config + delivery channel

jq '.jobs[] | select(.name | contains("email-calendar"))' ~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json

Note: deliver: "origin" means the assistant's reply body IS the cron payload. You must echo the digest in the reply AND post to Slack (see step 6).

2. Fetch Gmail unread (last 3 days)

gog gmail search 'is:unread newer_than:3d' --max 30 --json

⚠️ Flag is --max, NOT --max-results. Other useful: --plain, --oldest, --timezone. Auth auto from macOS keyring.

3. Fetch next-24h calendar across ALL known accounts

Use gog, not gws. gws calendar events list defaults to a Workspace service account (firebase-adminsdk) and has NO --account flag — calling it silently returns empty results and looks like a bug. gog reads per-user tokens from the macOS keyring.

NOW=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z)
TOMORROW=$(date -u -v+24H +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z)
for ACCT in $[e-mail] [e-mail] $[e-mail]; do
  gog calendar events --account "$ACCT" \
    --from "$NOW" --to "$TOMORROW" --max 50 --all --json
done

⚠️ No --today shortcut — build --from / --to in shell. ⚠️ JSON shape: gog calendar events --all returns {"events":[...]}, NOT {"items":[...]}. Always parse defensively: data.get("items", data.get("events", [])). ⚠️ One account may fail with No auth for calendar <email> — fall through and report the missing auth in the digest's "Action needed" section.

A verified helper script is at scripts/fetch_calendar_next24h.py — it runs the loop, handles JSON shape, and emits structured output ready for post-processing.

4. Filter Gmail to top-3 important items

See references/email-importance-filter.md for the full exclusion list. Mental model: exclude self-sent system mail, transactional digests, and newsletters; rank remaining by action signal (billing alerts > deadlines > security > government).

5. Compose digest (format is FIXED by cron prompt)

📬 *Life Digest — <Day YYYY-MM-DD>*

• *Important unread emails:*
  1. <emoji> *<Sender>* — <subject summary + action signal>.
  2. ...

• *Upcoming calendar events (next 24h):* <list OR "None across primary calendars.">

• *Action needed:*
  – <bullet per important item>

If calendar is empty, write "None across primary calendars" rather than omitting the section — the cron prompt mandates the format.

6. Post to #life AND echo in reply (both required)

TOKEN=$(bash -c 'source ~/.bashrc 2>/dev/null; echo -n "$HERMES_SLACK_BOT_TOKEN"' 2>/dev/null | tr -d '"')
[ -z "$TOKEN" ] && TOKEN=$(security find-generic-password -s "HERMES_SLACK_BOT_TOKEN" -w)

curl -fsS -X POST "https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
  --data-binary "$(python3 -c "import json; print(json.dumps({'channel':'C0AMM2B4319','text':open('/tmp/digest.txt').read()}))")"

Then ALSO put the same digest text in the assistant reply body — the cron system captures it via deliver: "origin".

Pitfalls

• Don't rank by recency alone. "Daily GCP cost $87.47" is informational; "444% of budget expected to be reached" is actionable. Always rank by action signal first.
• Self-sent mail dilutes the digest. Gmail filters out mail sent from $[e-mail] (cron outputs, deploy bots, daily reports) — exclude with -from:$[e-mail] in the search query, OR filter in the selection step.
• Using keyring backend: keyring line breaks json.loads (gog and gws both emit it). Strip the leading noise before parsing, or write a small helper.
• gog calendar events --all returns {"events":[...]} not {"items":[...]} — always data.get("items", data.get("events", [])). A 2026-07-27 run saw zero events for 5 calls before the real shape surfaced.
• gws calendar events list defaults to a Workspace service account (firebase-adminsdk) and has no --account flag — use gog for personal calendar queries.
• Multi-account loop is mandatory. A single-account query misses events on the your-project.com / jleechan2015 calendars. If one account returns No auth for calendar <email>, surface it in "Action needed" instead of crashing.
• deliver: "origin" ≠ no-Slack-post. It means the reply body is captured AND the cron also expects Slack visibility — do both.
• Don't fabricate numbers. "~$3.8K+ if 100% is ~$860/day" — only write that if you have explicit basis from the email body or related report. Otherwise quote the email's stated percentage verbatim.

References

• references/gog-gws-tool-quirks.md — flag gotchas for gog and gws, JSON shape, recurring-event instances, keyring noise line
• references/email-importance-filter.md — Gmail noise filter pattern with concrete exclusion list (Chase/Monarch/Capital One/etc.)
• references/slack-life-channel.md — #life channel ID C0AMM2B4319, token sourcing chain, full curl recipe

Scripts

• scripts/fetch_calendar_next24h.py — verified multi-account calendar fetcher; handles JSON shape + per-account auth failures; emits structured JSON ready for the digest composer.

Origin

Captured 2026-07-22 from cron 85a468088e16 (run #78). Tool quirks captured from the live gog v0.10.0 and gws events list invocations.