98 comments

  • mashlol 2 days ago ago

    Definitely seems like it could be useful, but I'd be worried with giving AI write access to emails.

    Is there a good audit trail of exactly what actions it takes at each step? I'd personally be worried about leaking proprietary or otherwise private information this way, or having it hallucinate information when it sends out emails potentially causing catastrophic issues.

    • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

      Valid concern - April does not write emails for you unless you specifically ask for it. Users usually dictate what they want to reply.

      But do you think a 'safe mode' - where April does only non destructive operation like read/summarize/draft/move emails to a folder would help you build trust?

      It's in our pipeline - we can prioritize it to mitigate that fear.

      • zacharycohn 2 days ago ago

        I started building basically April last week. I have a "safety" toggle in my app. If it's on, there's a "Review Actions" tab that any write or destructive actions go to. Then when I'm done dictating/commuting/whatever, I open the Review tab and go through the actions (add this calendar event, send this text message, reply to this email, etc) one by one - it sort of works like a checklist.

        Feel free to take the idea, if it's helpful. No credit/rights necessary. Y'all are much farther along than I am and if you come out with an Android app I'll probably end up a customer!

      • jFriedensreich a day ago ago

        Its the most frightening naive reply i could imagine, if you can ask for it, it can hallucinate you asking for it or it can get prompt injected you asking for it. for voice only agents without UI approval process the only way is to have a separate clean room permission agent that does only get absolute safe context not even aggregate email titles. also for emails its impossible to design a safe agent that does any sort write action after reading anything in a mailbox because the mailbox is by definition tainted third party data and personal sensitive at the same time. even moving to a folder without can be used for attacks by hiding password reset notification mails etc.

      • pavel_lishin 2 days ago ago

        > April does not write emails for you unless you specifically ask for it.

        What if it thinks you asked for it?

        • jvwww 2 days ago ago

          Feels pretty easy to mitigate against. If a user deselects "allow email sending", then you can just remove that as a possible tool-call so it becomes impossible.

      • kitchi 2 days ago ago

        Absolutely, having the AI agent write out a draft and leave it there, or better yet grant it read-only access to my email and have it draft email responses and store it somewhere else where I can retrieve it would be fantastic.

        AI is still not at the point where I am comfortable letting it run free with my email, but a draft that I can read over and make changes to before sending it out is a game changer.

      • tryitnow 2 days ago ago

        Yes, a safe mode would be great. I think it's a "nice to have" for a lot of early adopter (type of people who read HN), but it will be a "must have" more corporate types (a much bigger market).

      • dfee a day ago ago

        > April does not write emails for you unless you specifically ask for it.

        > But do you think a 'safe mode' - where April does only non destructive operation like read/summarize/draft/move emails to a folder would help you build trust?

        > It's in our pipeline

        Wat

        • vedhsaka a day ago ago

          Means April will not send emails even if you dictate the email and ask it to send it. In safe mode, it will not have access to tool calls which are related to send email, move to trash.

      • SamBam a day ago ago

        > April does not write emails for you unless you specifically ask for it. Users usually dictate what they want to reply.

        > Send replies that I dictate (it handles the formatting and tone)

        How does it handle the tone without editing your dictation?

      • monkeydust 2 days ago ago

        Yes, think this needs to be way up on your priority list.

      • vedhsaka a day ago ago

        Point taken - Safe mode goes out this week.

      • smt88 2 days ago ago

        Safe mode is absolutely necessary. I'd never let an LLM do things for me. They repeatedly prove that they categorically can't be jailed or trusted.

    • rukuu001 a day ago ago

      I am building just such a thing, with an overall limitation that it will only interact with emails that only have our team on them. It’s fun

  • ankit219 2 days ago ago

    I like the idea. I also think you may need a mechanism to detect adverse actions before they are executed. This becomes important because an email cannot be unsent, and if I dont review the text, the 1 in 100 chance of the email sounding weird would freak me out. There is also the basic corner cases against AI prompt injection and all those spam and phishing emails that are rampant and more and more plausible sounding. Wonder if you have ideas around how to deal with those?

    • nehasuresh1904 a day ago ago

      Absolutely. We will be adding a safe mode where April can perform only read, summarize emails & calendar schedule, create drafts but cannot send or delete emails.

      • danenania a day ago ago

        Maybe reading out the draft to confirm before sending could be a nice middle ground? Could help with peace of mind about exactly what's being sent, and you could go back and forth on the message if it's not quite right. Once people use it for awhile and trust it more, they could then enable auto-send.

        Congrats on the launch btw—cool stuff!

        • vedhsaka a day ago ago

          That happens now - before Send/Delete it will ask for confirmation.

          • danenania a day ago ago

            Oh nice. Does it read you the text of the draft? Didn’t think I saw that in the demo, but maybe I missed it.

            • vedhsaka a day ago ago

              Yeah, It does. We mentioned only few of the things in the demo or else it would have been very long. Apart from hard delete, create /edit labels - all operations can be done through April.

              Create/edit/delete draft are very common use cases as people would like to read before sending.

  • fuckaj a day ago ago

    I love the idea (also wondering when Google would build this)

    But the situation where emails are backing upload as you drive to work and back to back meetings sounds like a mismanaged workplace.

    The real impact (not a startup idea really) is fixing whatever makes the workplace like that. Usually everyone needs to be involved in everything and bad meeting management. Could be bad prioritisation and taking on too much work. Could be busywork.

    If AI could solve those problems or help it might be good.

    • TheTaytay 19 hours ago ago

      Email is the proxy for work management in many orgs. I think it could be a stand-in for GitHub issues instead, and the desire to process it while not observing the screen makes sense. (But I agree with your overall distaste for managing work that way. “A World Without Email” by Newport speaks directly to to that)

    • nehasuresh1904 a day ago ago

      Thank you. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

      There is a category of users who have to deal with emails and meetings as a primary part of their job. For instance our power user is a Head of Sales who uses April to just get a rundown of his day and get context about his customers before the meeting. It's his typical workday and wouldn't be a mismanaged workplace.

  • peterkelly 20 hours ago ago

    If there's one thing I definitely don't want AI in the middle of, it's communication with other people. The potential for misunderstandings due to hallucination in summaries, both on my end and the recipient's, scares me. There were some pretty bad examples with Apple News.

    Accuracy matters, especially when communicating with customers or between managers/employees, and I can imagine many kinds of scenarios where this goes wrong.

  • andrewrn 2 days ago ago

    I think I watched you guys get into the batch via the mcp hackathon yc had. Congratulations and best of luck with the startup.

    • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

      Yes Yes! The MCP hackathon was our way in. Thank you, really appreciate the support.

    • nehasuresh1904 2 days ago ago

      yes :) thank you for the support.

  • Lienetic 2 days ago ago

    How are you handling the formatting and tone part of the email so that it doesn't sound like AI? I've tried to use AI tools for email multiple times but always end up significantly editing or rewriting the email myself.

    • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

      Yeah - April learns how you speak/correct your emails - it picks up your writing patterns and keeps evolving. The more you use it, the more it sounds like you rather than generic AI.

      • Lienetic a day ago ago

        Can you explain a bit more about this? Are you building a profile of what I write and who I write it to? Fetching relevant examples and passing that through some (cloud?) LLM when writing the email?

        I'm definitely curious on the technicals but there is also a bit of a trust element here - both on trusting that my email (likely some of my most sensitive data) is handled with care and trust that the actual responses are phrased well.

        • vedhsaka a day ago ago

          Sure, the data stored are (User's relation to the sender) + tone + way of writing.

          None of the email's actual content is/will be stored (Goes against gmail's compliance)

      • cdblades 21 hours ago ago

        Your privacy policy and security page say you do not use any user data for training, it also says you don't store any user data. How do you square that with this comment?

        - https://tryapril.com/security - https://tryapril.com/privacy

  • iamflimflam1 2 days ago ago

    Sounds very cool. Do you have concerns around what’s Google are doing themselves in this space? What will differentiate you from them?

    Hope the above doesn’t come across as negative - just interested in how you see this market developing.

    • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

      (cofounder here) Honestly, we were hoping Gemini would nail this so we wouldn't have to build it ourselves, but here we are. The main difference is we're not bounded by Google's ecosystem - we're starting with Gmail but already working on Outlook and other integrations. Also, the goal is to build an executive assistant, not just a voice client for email and calendar.

    • monkeydust 2 days ago ago

      Google native AI integration to Gmail and calendar frequently disappoints be it on desktop or phone (Pixel), it's like Apple and Siri. Should be better given resources but way of base when compared to our expectations.

      • rockwotj 2 days ago ago

        Shortwave has had all this and more for over a year and still nothing in Gmail.

  • TheTaytay 2 days ago ago

    This looks cool. Any chance you could wrap my Claude Code sessions as well? That's the thing I really want to be voice-driven for my commute. (serious question :) )

    • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

      That would be supercool - but not the focus point right now. Though I totally see myself using it.

    • dcreater a day ago ago

      [flagged]

      • TheTaytay 19 hours ago ago

        I find my conversations with Claude code to be much higher level than the actual code being written, so it feels more like “I would like my assistant to be able to manipulate text files of all sorts and use scripts to do it”

      • dang a day ago ago

        No personal attacks, please.

  • Nash0x7e2 2 days ago ago

    Looks awesome! I downloaded the app and was able to get it connected to my accounts, and it is working.

    However, I did notice that connect took around a minute to a minute and a half before the agent was in the call and able to speak. Is this a byproduct of the underlying calling service you're using or the traffic?

    Regardless, awesome app, curious to see how it continues to improve!

    • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

      Sorry for the bad experience. It is because of the sudden traffic. Looking at it.

  • melvinmelih 2 days ago ago

    > we could solve this dead time problem and start doing things on the go

    Interesting idea, but how do you address car safety concerns? Studies consistently show that cognitive distraction, even with voice interfaces, can significantly increase crash risk. Wouldn’t managing emails and calendars while driving still fall into that category?

    • johnfn 2 days ago ago

      Phone calls while driving are pretty clearly in the Overton window of 'safe things you can do in a car', and it doesn't seem a priori obvious to me that this is worse. Though I do agree with you that in an ideal world people wouldn't even take phone calls and would instead focus 100% of their effort on not killing me.

    • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

      (cofounder here) Fair concern - cognitive distraction is real. We see it more like taking a phone call while driving (which people already do). We're purposely keeping interactions simple to make sure features aren't too distracting, and are working on a 'safe mode' that limits you to basic read-only operations while driving. We're actively researching attention management to make it simpler. Safety comes first.

      • trenchpilgrim 2 days ago ago

        > We see it more like taking a phone call while driving (which people already do).

        And which we know is highly unsafe: https://unews.utah.edu/up-to-27-seconds-of-inattention-after...

        Maybe you can talk about other "dead time" without safety impact - e.g. doing my laundry involves low mental workload but my hands aren't free!

        • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

          Got it - makes sense. The laundry example is perfect. Moments where your hands are tied or when you want screen-free time

    • TheTaytay 2 days ago ago

      There are so many times other than driving that voice is the preferred medium here. It feels like just one example. (And as others pointed out, taking a hands-free phone call during a drive is not at all provocative these days, to the point that it feels like an odd thing to fixate on personally.)

      • swsieber 2 days ago ago

        Given that they dented their call while doing the demo, it doesn't seem weird to fixate on. I think the criticism is valid, given the framing presented and the pitch used to investors.

        Also, audio interfaces incur different amounts of mental load / distraction. I wouldn't be surprised if this was more distracting than just talking to a person.

        • vedhsaka 2 days ago ago

          I think the car dent story originally came from - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45008239. As I clarified there - the dent happened before the April demo, during hackathon stress while taking out the car from parking.

          But totally valid criticism about cognitive load - better example could be dog walking, cooking or screen free time.

          • jvwww 2 days ago ago

            It should really be made clearer in your post that that the crash was not from speaking with April, as it's a bit unclear. Cool product, good luck!

        • TheTaytay a day ago ago

          Oh gosh - good point. Sorry! (I watched the other demo video and didn't see this)

  • mandeepj a day ago ago

    > Here's a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISKwEyuQQEo#t=50

    I felt it was more of a tutoring session!! Wouldn't it be distracted driving if you are using it while on the wheel? If not, then honestly, anyone can do those things faster. Also, if you had organized your inbox, many of those emails shown in the demo wouldn't be there.

    Anyway, congratulations on the launch. Looking forward to the next iteration.

  • matt8p a day ago ago

    Congrats on the launch!! How is privacy handled? I would like to try it but I have emails I don't feel comfortable being consumed by third party. Thx!

  • abraxas a day ago ago

    Is my life so boring that this is of no use to me? I don't think I get 30+ emails in a week (various commercial quasi-spam excepted) let alone that many on a 40 minute drive.

    I think I represent a typical office employee where I get maybe a dozen emails at work and a few calendar invites. Nothing I can't get through in the first 10 minutes of work in the morning. Usually emails that take time are those that I can't outsource to AI anyway.

    Nevertheless congrats on the launch and best of luck.

  • tryitnow 2 days ago ago

    The only reason I'm not downloading it is because 3 days not enough for me to evaluate it and I don't really want to have to add another reminder to cancel yet another subscription.

    • adamkochanowicz 2 days ago ago

      I never set reminders. I just cancel right away. 99.9% of the time, it will just end when the trial is over, or if I just want to pay for a month, when that period is over.

  • pacifika 2 days ago ago

    I’ll use email filters which work when I’m not at my inbox.

    • ivape 2 days ago ago

      [flagged]

      • dang 2 days ago ago

        Please don't cross into personal attack in HN posts.

      • adamkochanowicz 2 days ago ago

        Huh? What relation does that have to do with setting email filters?

  • zacharycohn 2 days ago ago

    Please add text messaging and an Android app too??

  • a day ago ago
    [deleted]
  • jngiam1 a day ago ago

    Can we connect our own MCPs? We have a remote server we have for internal tools (running on our gateway).

    I’ve always been interested to use voice more with the tools

  • svota 2 days ago ago

    How are you handling the attack vector of in-context commands[1]?

    [1]: https://guard.io/labs/scamlexity-we-put-agentic-ai-browsers-... (currently on the front page)

    • dy5topian 2 days ago ago

      that's a really interesting one

    • danenania a day ago ago

      I think you could probably solve it for this use case by just including a confirmation step for potentially destructive actions which is isolated from other context.

  • 2 days ago ago
    [deleted]
  • doctoboggan a day ago ago

    Can I use this to sort through my backlog of ~15k unread emails? If so, I will sign up now.

    • vedhsaka a day ago ago

      You can - we have seen cases where people have deleted 1600 emails in one voice session. But as the pagination happens - it will be in batches, read/delete everything. We have to limit gmail's rate limits

      • doctoboggan a day ago ago

        What does that user experience look like? Could I say "move every unread unimportant email to a folder"? How would I do this work in batches?

        • vedhsaka a day ago ago

          Personally I won't do that as LLM's way of judging an unimportant email vs my judgement is different - we are still working on evolving that but again email is so different for different people that it will need a lot of learning.

          But you can say remove all the emails which have unsubscribe text and it will do that in the batch of 20-100 (based on the app's rate limit at that time)

  • zacharycohn 2 days ago ago

    Also your website pricing is different than the pricing you mention in this post.

    • nehasuresh1904 2 days ago ago

      Hey we're running an intro offer with the pricing mentioned here. Updated website to reflect that.

  • TimCTRL 2 days ago ago

    Cool Demo!

  • azhenley a day ago ago

    Your Terms of Use is a white page when I go to it.

  • AIorNot 2 days ago ago

    great demo - wonder why isnt google just providing this as part of Gemini plans - I would pay money for it, why is Google so far behind on Gemini integration?

  • wrs 2 days ago ago

    Let me just put in a plug here for not trying to fill all of your so-called "dead time" with so-called "productive activity". Mind-wandering times like driving, showering, laundry, coffee-making, etc. can produce some of your most creative moments and may even be essential to your mental health. [0]

    [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662732...

    • netsharc a day ago ago

      Don't worry, AI will take over those for you.. /s

  • b8 2 days ago ago

    The subscription seems high and it doesn't seem practical to me. Goodluck though.

  • dcreater a day ago ago

    Its always sad/disappointing/curious when non-american engineers choose to use american accents as their voice choice instead of their ethnicity or literally anything else.

  • dizlexic 2 days ago ago

    ooo prompt injecting with my contacts. sounds like fun.

  • rvz 2 days ago ago

    We are just another month closer into the year 2000.

  • vasco 2 days ago ago

    Isn't this a repost? I swear I just saw this posted and they got ripped for telling people to drive while using it when it made them crash.

  • bfeynman 2 days ago ago

    [flagged]

    • dang 2 days ago ago

      > amazing that stuff like this still gets funded. This sounds like a 2 day project

      Ai yai yai - you can't dismiss someone's work that way, especially not in launch threads. HN has additional rules when people are sharing their work, because it's particularly important not to be a jerk in such threads. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html as well as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, we'd appreciate it. Thoughtful criticism is fine, of course, but supercilious dismissals are something we'd really like people to avoid here.

  • puma4 2 days ago ago

    [flagged]

    • dang 2 days ago ago

      Edit: when I replied to the parent comment, it consisted of the text "she?" and nothing else. (If you're going to edit a comment once it has replies, please do it in a way that allows the replies to preserve their original context. For example, you can always add "Edit" and then post additional text.)

      ---- original reply: ----

      Can you please not post like this? We want substantive, thoughtful discussion on this site.

      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

      Edit: the top text had this bit which I've replaced now:

        “she” (sorry, I can’t help anthropomorphizing) can
      • 2 days ago ago
        [deleted]