I can now email my AI

Using email for interprocess communication is an idea that isn't usually considered. But it is so easy! Why isn't it used? Well, I have some ideas as to why and why not, and I am doing it anyway.

So, I made a script that checks a mailbox and then sends a reply email. It can be customized for any purpose. The programmer only needs to create an email address and define a callback function to implement custom functionality:

def callback(input_text): #--> result_text, *attachments

Where attachments are path/filenames of the files to attach to the return email. The email attachments are entirely optional.

I used the "unlimited email" technique described in an earlier blog post to generate the email address for my bot. The bot periodically checks its email and then produces a response. It is a very simple system that solves interprocess communication. It is basically a mailbox and a script. It is flexible. The emails can be human-to-bot or bot-to-bot or bot-to-human, and they can contain any content. Email is even a persistent message queue! I am amazed at how simple this is considering the number of problems it solves.

Next, I will try adding cron jobs.

So, yeah, I did this and it changed my life.