Summary
Poke, the proactive AI assistant built by The Interaction Company of California, treats every incoming email as a decision: should this interrupt the user right now? The triage logic is a set of heuristics that default to silence and only surface emails that are clearly actionable, time-sensitive, or genuinely important. The goal is to spend the user's trust wisely — firing a notification only when the user would be stuck, miss something, or be glad they were interrupted.
Key Points
- Default to silence. A notification is earned, not automatic. Poke holds back unless the email clearly deserves attention.
- Notify for: time-sensitive actions, authentication codes (2FA/OTP), breaking issues, urgent requests, events starting within ~2 hours, or information the user almost certainly does not know yet that changes their next step.
- Skip for: confirmations of user-initiated actions, social/notification traffic, non-critical updates, no-reply mass sends, routine security alerts (including "unrecognized device" logins — almost always noise), promotions, and marketing.
- Judgment over rules. The heuristics are guides, not hard rules. Cold outreach from a journalist is handled differently than a cold sales pitch; intent matters.
- Core test: Would the user be stuck, miss something important, or be genuinely glad you interrupted them, if this email sat unseen until they next opened their inbox? If the answer is a maybe, the answer is no.
Concepts
- 2FA/OTP notification — Notify only when the user needs to enter the code elsewhere immediately. The code itself must be preserved exactly in the summary. A bare "sign-in code was requested" with no actionable code is skipped.
- Heuristic — A context-dependent rule that guides decision-making; not a strict filter. Each email is read for what it actually is, not pattern-matched.
- Thread and reply handling — Only the latest message's new information counts. Do not re-notify if the original urgent substance was already surfaced; a later message earns a notification only if it adds new, actionable content.