I wanted one place to start my day — something that shows me what needs attention without me having to open five different apps.

The Ask

A dashboard that runs automatically every morning, pulls in everything that matters — emails, reminders, project tasks — and presents it as a single checklist I can work through. No manual setup, no copy-pasting from different sources.

How it was built

I described what I wanted in a Cowork Dispatch session and it built the whole thing. Here is every step that went into it:

• Gmail scan. Every morning at 08:00 it scans my Gmail for emails that need a reply — filtered to cut out newsletters, notifications, and automated confirmations. Only real action items come through.
• Apple Reminders sync. Reads all incomplete reminders across every list. I use MinimaList on my iPhone to capture tasks on the go — MinimaList syncs to Apple Reminders, so everything I note on my phone shows up automatically in the dashboard.
• Apple Notes project scan. I asked it to scan all my Apple Notes and extract every running project. It went through over 400 notes, identified which ones contained actual projects, and condensed everything into one overview.
• Task checklist. Everything is presented as a checklist I can tick off directly in the browser. Tasks are colour-coded by urgency: red for overdue or action required, yellow for soon, green for someday.
• Clickable client projects. I wanted to click on a client project and see its tasks expand inline — so I asked for that. Each project row opens a detail panel with all open tasks for that client.
• Progress visualisation. A donut chart and progress bars at the top showing how many tasks are done per urgency category. Adds a light gamification layer to working through the list.
• Apple Reminders deep link. Each reminder row has a small 🔔 button that opens Apple Reminders directly — so I can go straight to the source to mark it done or reschedule.
• Scheduled refresh. The dashboard updates itself every morning via a scheduled task — I don’t trigger it. It also sends an iMessage summary to my iPhone with the most urgent items of the day.
• iMessage notifications. At the end of every Cowork task, or when input is needed, I get an iMessage on my phone. The iMac runs 24/7 so tasks can run overnight without me being at my desk.

The result

I start each day with a clear picture of what is actually on my plate — not scattered across Notes, Mail, and Reminders, but in one place, prioritised and ready. The things that were slipping through the cracks (overdue reminders, emails waiting for a reply, client tasks I had mentally parked) are all visible at a glance.

The whole setup took one conversation. And I added a nice graphical visualisation of the progress. So it makes it feel like a gamification of my tasks.