Follow-ups

A follow-up is something still owed between you and one other person. Pepper finds them in the chats you connect, or you tell it about one yourself.

Every follow-up has a direction.

• You owe. You said you'd do something, someone asked you for something or a decision, or set you a deadline. "Send Mira the contract by Friday."
• Owed to you. Someone said they'd do something for you, or you asked them and are waiting. "Sam Lee to confirm the venue."

Tasks you tell Pepper on Telegram, like remind me to call Theo Grant on Thursday, are follow-ups too, on the You owe side. They show as Yours in the brief (the summary Pepper sends three times a day) and under Your list on /tasks. With task nudges on, you get one reminder when each comes due; it waits through quiet hours, and a brief that listed the task in the last two hours counts as the reminder.

After new messages arrive, Pepper reads each chat that changed, in batches, with some earlier messages for context. It sends the first 800 characters of each message, so a task buried deep in a long message can be missed. An AI model (at Anthropic) proposes follow-ups, each with the exact words it came from. Then plain code, with no AI involved, checks each one before it's kept:

• The quote must appear in a message from that chat, ignoring capitals and spacing. If it doesn't, the follow-up is thrown away.
• For a message someone else wrote, the follow-up is with whoever wrote the message, whatever the model says. For your own messages and for meetings, Pepper goes with the model's reading.
• In a group, a message that replies to or mentions only other people is their conversation, not yours.
• Something that matches an open follow-up with the same person from the last week is treated as a repeat.

Only clear cases go straight onto your list:

• something you said you'd do, in your own words,
• a request made to you directly, in a one-to-one chat,
• something you asked for in a one-to-one chat and are waiting on.

For everything else, such as requests in groups or someone saying they'll get back to you, choose Track it in Review to put it on your list.

There's one rule that needs no model at all. If your last message in a one-to-one chat was a question (it has a question mark), nobody has answered in 12 hours, and it is less than two weeks old, Pepper opens "Waiting for an answer" as owed to you.

A follow-up starts as Possible or Open, depending on how clear the case is, and ends as Done or Not a task.

For a task you set yourself, choosing "not a task" stops Pepper tracking it, and snoozing moves its date instead of hiding it.

In Telegram, reply to a brief, a nudge or /tasks with the item's number and what to do. A bare snooze is a day, and a day name or date sets a new due date:

2 done
3 snooze
1 snooze a week
4 not a task
2 friday

Or tap the buttons under a brief. See Briefs for what each one does.

On the dashboard, the Follow-ups tab has two columns, You owe and Owed to you. Each row has three buttons, each with a keyboard shortcut; only the first button's name changes between the columns:

Every action takes effect at once and offers Undo for 10 minutes. Overdue items show a red OVERDUE 1D label. More in the dashboard guide.

Each row on the dashboard shows Pepper's one-line summary of the message. Under it, Source says shows the original words. Briefs show the same quote, cut to 90 characters, under each item in Needs you. If the line and the quote disagree, trust the quote and mark the item Not a task.

When a new message shows that something on your list is finished, Pepper keeps the closing words. You'll see it in your next brief, under Closed since last brief:

✓ Dana Reyes: Send the signed lease ("All signed, sending it over now")

The rules are strict, to keep items from closing by mistake:

• Something you owe closes only on your own message.
• Something owed to you closes only on a message from that person.
• If someone else in a group says it's done, Pepper keeps a note of it but leaves the item open for you to check. The note isn't shown on the row yet.

The model still reads the message, so it can mistake a reply for the task being done. The closing quote in the brief lets you check.

Pepper never writes to the chats it reads. It can't reply, send, mark read or archive. Ask it for help with a reply and it writes a draft that you copy and send yourself.

Pepper also can't see your calendar yet, so a follow-up only has a date when the message gave or clearly implied one, or when you set one yourself.