Daily Brief¶

Open Daily Brief from Today, or visit /brief in Collie's web interface. It brings together what needs your attention, today's appointments, ongoing work and prepared replies. No account or nickname is required to read it.

Read and act¶

The first section highlights up to three priorities. Each item names its source and opens the relevant conversation, calendar or communication inbox. The remaining sections show the day's actual appointments and task progress. Canceled or unfinished work is not counted as completed.

Hide removes an unchanged item from the brief. Snooze pauses it for a day. Neither action cancels or completes the underlying task. Hidden items retain their names and a Bring back button; changed items return automatically. Decisions that require your answer remain visible.

Source timestamps show when Collie read its local records. An unavailable or partly read source is reported explicitly. An empty calendar does not mean you have no appointments if no calendar is connected.

For large task histories, the brief reads a recent window instead of opening every conversation. It tells you how many session inboxes were not checked, and never assumes that the unread portion is clear. This does not change task scheduling or remove older work.

Your to-dos¶

Your to-dos is a list you keep yourself, on this computer. Add a line and, if you like, a due date. A to-do that is late or due today also appears under Needs you; one you tick off today is listed as finished today. To-dos with a later date, or none, stay in the list without crowding your day. Hiding a to-do from the brief does not tick it off.

If you edit the same to-do in two windows, the second save is refused and your words stay in the form: the list shows the other window's version, and saving again replaces it. Anything you type while a save is still on its way is kept.

News from your feeds¶

News is off until you add a feed. Expand News feeds and topics, list RSS or Atom addresses that start with https:// (up to eight), and optionally some topics. With topics, only headlines whose title or summary contains one of them as a whole word are shown. Choose how often to check, from every 15 minutes to once a day, and how many headlines the brief keeps.

Saving reads new feeds at once; Check now reads them all again. Otherwise Collie checks in the background while it is running, after you have opened the brief. Each feed shows when it was last read and, if the last attempt failed, why; its earlier headlines stay until a later read succeeds.

Headlines are for reading. Each one opens the article in your browser. A headline never becomes a task, never appears under Needs you, and is never given to a model as something to do. If the morning email is on, the headlines are included in it. See the privacy policy for exactly what these requests send.

Receive a morning email¶

Connect an email account in Email & phone.
In Daily Brief, expand Email settings and choose that connection.
Set your local time and language, then choose Turn on and save.

Daily email is off by default. It goes only to the owner address already saved with the chosen connection. The separate automatic-reply setting is unchanged. Use Preview email text to inspect the snapshot currently on screen without sending it. Refreshing status preserves unsaved scheduling edits.

Collie must be running during the morning window. The default window extends four hours after the selected time; a missed day is skipped instead of sent in a burst later. Time zones include daylight-saving changes. Pausing an email connection keeps the schedule but prevents sending until that connection is ready again.

The delivery history distinguishes provider accepted, failed and unconfirmed. Provider acceptance is not proof of delivery. An unconfirmed attempt is never automatically resent. Turning the schedule off prevents new submissions; a submission already in progress may still finish.

Get the morning report instead¶

In Email settings, set What to send to The morning report and save. The morning email is then the morning report (the same one collie report build makes) — what went well overnight, quick things for you, replies that are ready, your projects and a few reads — as a designed email, with the same report as plain text inside it for mail apps that show no HTML. Everything above still applies: the same account, time, window, one email a morning, and the same delivery history.

One email a morning, never two. The report replaces the brief. If you switch after that morning's email has gone, the change starts tomorrow.
It is built when the window opens. Collie reads your connected sources and asks your model, so the email arrives a minute or two after the time you chose. A build that fails is tried again ten minutes later, then twenty minutes after that — three builds a day at most. If none succeeds, or the next try would miss the morning window, that morning's plain Daily Brief is sent instead (still one email), and the history says why. Once built, the email is frozen: a restart sends that one and never builds a second.
Write reply drafts in Gmail (on by default) lets the report put suggested replies in your Gmail drafts, each addressed only to whoever wrote to you. Nothing is sent from there; you open each draft and send it yourself. If the COLLIE_REPORT_GMAIL_DRAFTS environment variable is set, the switch shows that and cannot be changed on the page.
Send me one now builds a report straight away and emails it to the saved account, after you confirm. It is a real email. It does not replace the morning's email, only one can be on its way at a time, and at most three go out a day.

What reaches your inbox. With an email account connection, Collie's own SMTP session sends one message: the plain text first, then the designed page, with the dog's picture attached inside the message (a cid: image), so no mail app has to fetch anything and nothing reports back when you open it. With Collie Mail, the relay at mail.collie.run carries the same designed email once it has been updated to a version that accepts pages; until then Collie asks the relay first, sends the plain text alone, and the history says the report “went as plain text” and why. Links in the report are https:// only; there are no scripts, web fonts or remote images.

Reply to the brief¶

A reply from the connection's owner can use the exact retained snapshot from that email. For example, “What was the second appointment?” refers to that morning's text, even if today's dashboard has changed. If the thread cannot be matched reliably, Collie does not substitute a different day's brief. A reply to the morning report works the same way, with the report's plain text.

Normal inbox controls still apply: prepare a reply, or explicitly choose Run as project task for work requiring tools. A reply to a brief does not silently approve project work or external actions.

Mute a project from the report. Reply to the morning report with mute <project> opening the first line — one project the report named, as it shows it (colliehq/collie) or by the repository's name alone (collie). Collie adds it to Projects to leave out (the REPORT_MUTED setting), answers in the same thread to confirm, and the next report leaves it out. Anything else you wrote — later on that line or below it, not counting quoted history or a signature — is passed on as its own ordinary reply, exactly as if the mute line were not there, and the confirmation says so. Only your own reply, from the connection's owner address and in the thread of a report Collie sent you, counts; “mute” anywhere but the first line, a name the report never mentioned (“mute the standup reminders”), a reply to the plain brief, or an automatic message is an ordinary reply and mutes nothing. To hear about the project again, remove it under Settings → Morning report → Projects to leave out.

Because a mute changes a setting, Collie also needs your mail provider's word that the reply really came from your address: the receiving server's Authentication-Results must show a DMARC pass for your domain, or a DKIM pass signed by it. Anyone can write your address in a From line; they cannot make your provider vouch for it. An email account connection reads that verdict from the message its provider stored. Collie Mail cannot yet: Cloudflare's email routing hands the relay no authentication verdict, so a mute sent there changes nothing — the reply says so, and your message is kept as an ordinary reply. Use the setting instead.

Available now¶

The desktop and email share one brief snapshot, with English and Chinese display. The page supports a narrow browser; there is no standalone mobile app. The brief reads local calendar, task, approval and communication records, and your own to-do list; the only news is from feeds you add. It does not yet perform a full semantic review of a Gmail mailbox.

Live email delivery requires a configured service account. The core brief remains useful without one. Developers can read the implementation and API details.