Gmailtail – Command-line tool to monitor Gmail messages and output them as JSON

144 pointsposted 7 months ago
by c4pt0r
(github.com)

34 Comments

3r7j6qzi9jvnve

7 months ago

This just polls every x (default 30) seconds; if you use IMAP you can do better with IDLE (e.g. I pipe `fetchmail --check` to something that triggers a sync to immediately get new mails)

_flux

7 months ago

I wonder though if also the Gmail interface supports something like this? It seems it's pretty fast at receiving email.

dataflow

7 months ago

There are pub/sub notifications but it's a bit of a pain to get working. You need an HTTP endpoint the server can reach for push notifications, I think, not long polling.

kevincox

7 months ago

The GMail web client definitely doesn't create an HTTP endpoint to receive updates. But the API it uses is likely proprietary and private (even if it was built on top of the public API there would be a backend bridging the two)

dataflow

7 months ago

Sorry, yes, my comment was confusing. I was answering the "how do I get faster notifications in a supported manner" part rather than the "how does the Gmail web UI do this" part.

love2read

7 months ago

What tool makes these readme’s for new github repos that are bulletpointed lists with features, always prefixed by an emoji?

sunrunner

7 months ago

I think this trend has been around for a while now (it started to become more noticable for me at least a couple of years ago).

At first there seemed to be a correlation between how 'cool' the project was and the number of emoji, but now it seems like it's as expected as just having a README itself.

I've definitely seen _more_ decorated READMEs, and I can't help but feel like there's an inverse correlation between emoji count and readability.

diggan

7 months ago

Not specifically about readmes/GitHub repos, but I've noticed some LLMs like Sonnet and GPT4.1 are really enthusiastic about doing emoji-prefixed lists for some reason.

dewey

7 months ago

Trained on too many JS libraries.

aritrogh

7 months ago

Not necessarily a helpful thing, In fact I think that we were to use this to create dynamic prompts then it increases exponentially

username135

7 months ago

When ever I see tons of emojis in a list/faq/readme I first think of LLM output.

jdironman

7 months ago

I do as well when I see:

# Code Comments Every Few Lines

vanrohan

7 months ago

It's probably LLM generated. Adding a fun/cool factor to the project. I created a Chrome Extension where you can "emojify" any text with a right-click. https://emoji-bot.com

yapyap

7 months ago

AI, I presume (but I’m not sure) that the code “agent” they are using creates it.

bravesoul2

7 months ago

Tool is an insult when applied to a human...

worldsayshi

7 months ago

Is there any good library or tool that let's me programmatically/easily or semi-automatically delete mail by query in gmail? The built in tools are not good enough. Does Thunderbird work with gmail nowadays?

jeffbee

7 months ago

Easily done in Google Apps Script.

nathants

7 months ago

Just have SES put the email in s3, then do stuff.

gsibble

7 months ago

Oh yeah, I'd love to hold on to people's emails and be responsible if they got leaked.

nisegami

7 months ago

One step closer to fully closing the loop on using LLMs to automate white collar work.

rubslopes

7 months ago

Is it just me, or is there a trend to make modern web applications accessible on the terminal?

slantaclaus

7 months ago

“a resurgence with new tooling and polish”