
Show HN: Caspy – AI Assistant for Emails - sarim
http://caspy.com
======
jwr
Anything that gets access to my E-mails and isn't an all-local app with local
processing instantly raises a red flag. My E-mail is not something I want out
there in public.

A quick glance at the page doesn't tell me if this thing processes my E-mail
online, or locally, and what data gets shared where and with whom.

~~~
sarim
I completely understand your concerns. Your emails aren't sent anywhere; they
are processed on our server. We have our own ML model so we don't share any of
your data with a third party. Moreover, we don't store the content of your
email. We just give emails scores based on various attributes and those scores
are used to make all the predictions.

~~~
e12e
> Your emails aren't sent anywhere; they are processed on our server.

So, I need to move my email to be hosted on your servers? Because if not, the
correct way to the describe what you're doing is: "email is sent to our
servers" which is the opposite of: "Your emails aren't sent anywhere".

Do you manage your own servers? Is the answer really, "your email is sent to
virtual servers we lease from Amazon" for example?

It's not that trusting (yet another) party with full access to every email is
necessarily a deal breaker - but every additional service and ops team that
gain access is another potential human error added, that could lead to
compromise.

Even compromise of something as trivial as ones email address: I currently get
almost all spam to the addresses I used to sign up for Adobe, LinkedIn and
Dropbox before they each got hacked in turn.

The only sensible assumption about a new service is that it will be
compromised at some point - it's important to be able to evaluate the risks
involved. (So you not storing email in perpetuity is good to know. One does
wonder how much data might be gleaned from getting a copy of a neural network
trained on my personal correspondence for a decade though).

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axyjo
I'm worried that with another free product like this, we'll get another
Unroll.me on our hands.

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sarim
Don't worry axyjo, its free for early users but we'll turn on pricing soon.

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neom
If you're going to charge me a subscription instead of mining and selling
(even abstract insights), I'm game. But first you have to promise you'll never
mine and sell my inbox.

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sarim
Mining and selling your Inbox data isn't our business strategy. We have a
subscription-based pricing model and we'll turn that on soon (2 months).

~~~
sarim
@stevesearer Both of those points are there so that we could train our ML
Model. But I fully understand people's concerns.

~~~
stevesearer
Yeah, I understand collecting data is a part of training your model but it
could be worth explicitly saying that zero data (either personally
identifiable or anonymized meta data or any data at all) will be sold or
rented. And if a change to that policy happens, include in the language of the
user agreement that it isn't retroactive and only applies to new accounts.

The vague language is what bothers people. Probably having very strong
language in the opposite direction (that you will NEVER sell any data, and
would shut down rather than sell it) would probably win you favor.

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ohitsdom
How does this differ from Google Inbox? I love Inbox, it has completely
changed my email habits. Inbox seems to already solve everything Caspy has,
but I could be missing something.

~~~
sarim
The goal of Caspy is to not just allow users to manage their Inboxes from
anywhere in their browsers but to also help them build stronger relationships
with Email contacts that they actually care about. It does a bunch of things
(copy/pasting for the second time :P): 1\. Which Emails are important and need
a reply. 2\. Which sent Emails require follow ups and what is the best time
for a follow up. 3\. Which contacts are important to you and which ones are
drifting away and need to be reconnected with.

~~~
StreakyCobra
I ask myself the same question.

> manage their Inboxes from anywhere in their browsers

I don't need this feature, I have a pinned tab with Google Inbox and it's one
click away like your extension, and usually I deal with mails only when I want
to, so it's a focused task that would be fullscreen anyway. You say «Email
notifications can sometimes ruin your focus and hamper your creativity», but I
would say the best way to stay focused is to consult mails only when decided.

> 1\. Which Emails are important and need a reply

Google Inbox is really smart and knows how to classify mails by category
without any training (Travel, Shopping, Finance, Social Network,
Notifications, Forums, Promotion), and for each category you can choose if A)
you want to get notifications when you receive them, and B) If they should be
shown grouped in the inbox. Nowadays, if I get a notification for a mail, it
means that the mail is of interest. I don't receive anymore notifications for
forums answers, promotions mails or notifications, neither on my computer nor
my phone.

> 2\. Which sent Emails require follow ups and what is the best time for a
> follow up.

Google Inbox let you use your inbox as a TODO list, where you can mark mails
(or groups, as above) as done, which has the same effect has archiving it.
Aside the "mark as done" feature, there is also a "snooze until" feature that
let you in one click snooze the mail (hide it from inbox) until Tomorrow, This
weekend, Next week, a given date, or even a place (looks awesome, I never saw
it actually). You can also "pin" mails so they stay on top of your inbox.

> 3\. Which contacts are important to you and which ones are drifting away and
> need to be reconnected with

I don't need this feature from my inbox, but maybe some people do.

So for me Google Inbox mostly solves the same problems, except it is free and
you get all bonus points from using Google: Automatically detecting flights
and travels mails, showing these info directly in the inbox, easy
visualization of mail attachments, Android application of Google Inbox, etc. I
don't know if you already tried Google Inbox, but if not you should, it is
important to know your main concurrent.

My goal is not to be rude, I'm trying to help you by showing that Google Inbox
solves already most of your problems, and people using it will notice that,
whatever ways you turn your arguments. Maybe you should direct your arguments
more on the «same features as Google, but without Google» side? Some people
have concern about Google having all their data, it may be working, but this
is just some thoughts that may be helping you. I wish you good luck for your
project, I hope you will make it succeed :-)

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wimgz
Seems nice but I don't get where the AI is?

~~~
madamelic
It is only AI to a layperson.

It seems like the "AI" is that it "learns" what emails you send replies to.

If it wants to be AI and useful, it should learn how to _reply_ to those
emails. This is just another Chrome extension (useful but it doesn't clear my
bar of AI)

~~~
jtmcmc
I mean it's totally AI in that it's an example of weak AI or more precisely
it's a type of machine learning. Neither it or anything else we have is any
other type of AI, however.

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inertial
Not a big fan of getting my Inbox managed by AI. I've found AI products to be
rather quirky & obstinate at respecting my preferences. Simple tasks require a
"learning" before it can be done right. I prefer rules that are predictable.

I can afford to miss out on news feed because it got mis-categorized by AI,
but can't take that risk with my Inbox.

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snackai
How is this AI? Snooze, Reply-to and mute emails? Wow, needs hella brain for
that. If-Statements are not AI.

The title is misleading.

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gerner
I think it's doing a little more than that:

"Caspy’s AI learns from your email history to figure out what types of emails
you send replies to. With that knowledge, it will alert you only when an email
needs a reply."

~~~
semi-extrinsic
But that's hardly AI. I think even Thunderbird does this, learns that emails I
click links in or reply to are important and flag them as such.

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fredley
There are important emails I never reply to, like Uptime robot notifications.
I would still like to be notified.

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CobrastanJorji
I like this idea, but most of my email needs relate to work emails, and I
don't have permission to share those with a third party. I'd love to try it if
there were some way to install the thing locally or have it run from my
browser.

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mdekkers
:D and again someone wants access to all my emails?

...no thanks.

