Everyday productivity

Every promise becomes a ticket, with the sentence it came from

Aestus reads the channels, mail and meeting notes you point it at, files the clear promises as tickets, and lists the unclear ones for you to decide.

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Everyday productivity

A to-do list that updates itself

Who it is for: The person who owns a team's list and keeps re-typing what everyone already said out loud.
What starts it: Five sweeps on weekdays in your workspace's time zone, or forward a thread to the capture address to sweep it now; On a schedule

Turn it on in Aestus

People do not lose work because they cannot write a task. They lose it because the promise was made somewhere that is not the task list — a sentence near the end of a call, a line in a busy channel, a commitment in the last paragraph of an email. By the time anyone opens the board, the promise is a memory, and memories are not distributed evenly across a team.

So this sweep reads the places promises are actually made, and turns the clear ones into real tickets. Each one carries the sentence it came from, the person who said it, the time, and the message's own id — which means a ticket you did not type is still a ticket you can check. "Who said they would do this?" stops being a research task.

What makes it worth keeping rather than demonstrating is what it refuses to file. An auto-filled list that fills with junk is abandoned inside a week, and the real work in it goes too. A candidate whose quote is not a contiguous span of the message it names is dropped. An owner the sweep would have had to guess is left off. A due date no sentence stated is never set, because a ticket due on a day nobody named is the fastest way to lose a person's trust in the whole list. Below high confidence, nothing is created at all — it is listed for you, and you decide.

The other half is subtraction. Before it decides anything, the sweep reads your open tickets, as you, with your own team visibility. A promise already covered by an open ticket is skipped and the ticket is named. A promise that only supplies a date your ticket is missing sets that date and changes nothing else — not the title, not the owner, not the column, not the priority. Work on a team you are not a member of is left out entirely and counted, so the log is never quietly shorter than it looks.

Filing twice is the failure that would end it, so the key that prevents it lives in the database rather than in a model's memory. Every ticket the sweep files carries a marker naming the exact message it came from, and every later sweep reads those markers back before it decides. A promise said in the call, repeated in the recap and confirmed by mail is one ticket, not three — and that holds across a restart, a new model and a re-run of the same window.

There is no meeting-recorder integration today. Notes reach Aestus when your recorder writes them into the Drive folder you name, or when you forward them to your capture address. And Slack is read on a schedule, not the second a message lands: five sweeps on a weekday, with the window overlapping so nothing falls between them.

Every sweep ends in a document rather than a silence. It states the window, what it scanned, what it filed, what it merged, what it held and why, what you already had, and every source it could not reach. Read as few or as many as you like — but the refusals are there, which is what makes the additions believable.

What you get

The artifact this use case produces, in the product view you would read it in.

Example — fictional team and data. Not a live run or customer result.

Worked example

document

Capture log — 2 filed, 2 held

Produced by: Run MER-RUN-2184 · read-only · document artifact · demo values

Filed: 2 promises became tickets, each carrying the sentence it came from: "I'll get the Q3 usage export over to Northwind before Friday." (Slack #acct-northwind, 2026-09-10 13:42, owner Priya Raman, due 2026-09-12); "Dan is going to write the migration note before we ship 0307." (Document "Platform sync 2026-09-10 - notes", 13:31, owner unassigned, due not stated). An owner is set only on an exact match, so a name two people share files unassigned rather than on the wrong person.
Merged into existing work: 1 existing ticket gained the one field this sweep is allowed to add — MER-298 gained its due date. No title, description, owner, priority or column was touched.
Held for you: 2 candidates read like promises but not clearly enough to file, so nothing was created for them: "Someone needs to answer the Vercel support thread."; "Maybe we should look at the onboarding drop-off at some point.". They are listed for a person to accept or drop.
Already covered: 1 candidate was already covered by work that exists — MER-307 — so nothing was filed. A ticket an earlier sweep filed is recognised by the marker in its own description, not by its title, which is what makes the dedupe survive a re-run.
Left out: 2 tickets are on teams this reader is not a member of, so they were dropped entirely rather than shown without their team, and counted here. The sources this sweep could not reach are named too: tickets on teams you are not a member of; Google Drive; direct messages and channels you did not list.
Sources: One numbered entry per candidate, each naming the channel, mail or note document and quoting the sentence, so every line above resolves to a message you can open. A candidate whose quote is not a contiguous span of that message is refused before anything is filed.

How it runs

Each step is one node in the workflow graph the interpreter runs. Nothing here is a prompt chain hidden in a route handler.

Workflow steps

01It reads only where you pointed it
The channels you list, the mailbox filter you set, the notes folder you name. Never a direct message, never a channel you did not list, and never an attachment. A source that is not connected is named in the log rather than skipped in silence.
02It separates promises from talk
A specific action a nameable person owes is a candidate. An opinion, a status report, a question and a "maybe we should" are not, and the sweep lists what it dropped and why.
03It checks the work before it touches your board
Every candidate is re-read against the source. A quote that is not a contiguous span of the message it claims, an owner that was guessed, a date no sentence named — each one is refused. Refusals a computer can settle are made in code; the rest are judged against a written rubric. On a second failure the run stops and nothing is filed.
04It reads your board first, as you
Your open tickets are read with your own team visibility before anything is decided. Already covered, so skip and name the ticket. Covered but missing the date this sentence supplies, so add the date and change nothing else. New and clear, so file. Not clear enough, so hold.
05It leaves a capture log
One document per sweep on your capture ticket: what it filed, what it merged, what it held and why, what you already had, what it could not reach, and the sentence behind every line.

By hand, and on Aestus

The same job, on either side.

By hand
You re-read the call notes after every meeting and type the actions out again.
On Aestus
The sweep reads the notes and files the clear actions with the sentence attached.
By hand
A promise in a busy channel is gone by Thursday.
On Aestus
The channels you list are swept five times a weekday, so the promise becomes a ticket the same morning.
By hand
The same promise arrives three times — in the call, the recap and the follow-up mail — and you file it twice.
On Aestus
Each filed ticket carries a marker naming the message it came from, and the next sweep reads those markers back, so a repeat updates what you have instead of adding to it.
By hand
A tool that files everything fills your list with junk, so you stop trusting the list.
On Aestus
Only promises it can quote, with a named owner, are filed. The rest are listed for you and nothing is created.
By hand
"Who said they would do this?" means going back to find the message.
On Aestus
The quote, the author, the time and the message's own id are in the ticket.
By hand
Nobody knows what the capture cost or whether it helped.
On Aestus
Each sweep is a run with its cost and tokens, and every filed ticket carries an outcome once you move it.

What Aestus records

Every run is auditable after the fact, which is what makes handing the job over survivable.

The run
Cost, tokens, duration and whether the review step passed, on the same ledger as every other run in the workspace.
The capture log
One document per sweep on your capture ticket, so this afternoon's sits beside this morning's and you can see what the sweep refused as well as what it filed.
The filed tickets
Each one records the sentence, the source and the sweep that made it. A ticket you archive an hour after it appears is the honest signal that the capture was wrong, and it is recorded as one.

What it connects to

Only the tools this workflow actually uses. Each one has a setup guide.

Questions teams ask

Will it fill my board with junk?

It files only a promise it can quote, from a sentence that names who owes it. Everything else is listed in the capture log and nothing is created. Ten new tickets per sweep is the default cap, and anything past it is listed rather than dropped.

Does it read my direct messages?

No. It reads the channels you list, the mailbox filter you set and the notes folder you name. Direct messages and channels you did not list are never read.

What happens when the same promise is said twice?

Each ticket it files carries a marker naming the message behind it, and every sweep reads those markers back before deciding anything. A repeat is skipped and named in the log; a repeat that supplies a date the ticket lacks sets that date and changes nothing else.

Can it change or close my tickets?

It can add a due date or an owner that a ticket is missing. It never rewrites a title, edits a description, moves a card, changes a priority, closes a ticket or reassigns work.

Can somebody run a sweep as me?

No. A sweep always runs as the person the run belongs to, because that is whose connected accounts it opens. A setting naming anybody else is refused rather than ignored.

All use cases How access is governed

Sources

lib/domain/use-cases/a-to-do-list-that-updates-itself/seed.ts
lib/domain/use-cases/a-to-do-list-that-updates-itself/capture-marker.ts
lib/ai/tools/first-party-tools.ts

Hand over A to-do list that updates itself.

Tell us how your team does this today and we will set it up with you.

Talk to us

Questions teams ask

Will it fill my board with junk?

Does it read my direct messages?

No. It reads the channels you list, the mailbox filter you set and the notes folder you name. Direct messages and channels you did not list are never read.

What happens when the same promise is said twice?

Can it change or close my tickets?

It can add a due date or an owner that a ticket is missing. It never rewrites a title, edits a description, moves a card, changes a priority, closes a ticket or reassigns work.

Can somebody run a sweep as me?

No. A sweep always runs as the person the run belongs to, because that is whose connected accounts it opens. A setting naming anybody else is refused rather than ignored.

Sources

lib/domain/use-cases/a-to-do-list-that-updates-itself/seed.ts

lib/domain/use-cases/a-to-do-list-that-updates-itself/capture-marker.ts

lib/ai/tools/first-party-tools.ts

Every promise becomes a ticket, with the sentence it came from

A to-do list that updates itself

What you get

Capture log — 2 filed, 2 held

How it runs

By hand, and on Aestus

What Aestus records

The run

The capture log

The filed tickets

What it connects to

Questions teams ask

Other use cases

Hand over A to-do list that updates itself.

Every promise becomes a ticket, with the sentence it came from

A to-do list that updates itself

What you get

Capture log — 2 filed, 2 held

How it runs

By hand, and on Aestus

What Aestus records

The run

The capture log

The filed tickets

What it connects to

Questions teams ask

Other use cases

Hand over A to-do list that updates itself.