Personal agents are a somewhat scary proposition. When Dots was released, I originally thought, “Never.” Then, curiosity got the better of me. I already use OpenAI for a lot of things, so trying its personal assistant felt like a natural fit. But deciding to try it out and coming to trust it are two very different things. While I trust OpenAI with a considerable amount of information about myself, I found it daunting to give it access to something like my personal e-mail account. Then, I thought about the extent of access Google and Apple have to my life. While I’ve come to trust their security over many years of experience, I’m not so sure about OpenAI.

I named my Dot teemo, because it’s my favorite League of Legends character and all of my devices are named after LoL characters or characters from the Aliens universe. I wasn’t going to give teemo a name, at first, but decided that it might make trusting it a little easier if I thought of it as a cute, tiny, boyscout-like yordle. Tufts of hair and all. I considered asking it to talk like Teemo, but decided that was a bridge too far.

In the beginning

I’ve spent three days with teemo.

At first, I was totally against giving it any access to my Google account. To start small, one of the first things I tried with teemo was meal planning. I’ve been on a fitness and nutrition journey for several years, and in the last month or so really started trying to lock in nutrition around hitting the macros my nutritionist wants me to. That’s hard when you’re flying solo, but I’ve been using recipes that prep for the week to make my life easier. So a couple of days ago, I decided to let teemo take the wheel there. I set it out with the simple task of researching meals in accordance with my macro goals.

While it was working, I realized that it might be good to start getting feedback on my meal plans from my nutritionist more routinely. She’s offered to do so a number of times, but I stopped taking advantage of it, because the friction of maintaining a daily log was just a little too much. We usually just review a week or a typical day’s worth of meals when I have my appointments. I was about to e-mail her myself when I had the thought, “What if I just let teemo do it for me?” After a few minutes of wavering about the e-mail access, I decided to YOLO allow OpenAI access to my personal e-mail.

Teemo took the menu and drafted an e-mail to my nutritionist including all of the staple ingredients, list of proteins, grains, etc., and the macro targets for the week. It explained that I’d been experimenting with weekly meal-prepping and asked if she could give me feedback on the menu. After it was done, I took a read, and was pretty happy with the writing—it even did a reasonable job of sounding like me. I told it to e-mail her, and when responses landed in my inbox, it then relayed her feedback:

• Low in calories for my level of activity
• Eat the dessert unapologetically to help hit my calorie goal
• Incorporate more whole grains
• Eat more fruit

After concluding the thread, teemo incorporated all of the feedback and modified the recipes accordingly. Breakfast got a healthy serving of blueberries, some apples got added to the shopping list, the rice in my lunches got upped by half a cup, and the word “optional” left the heading on the dessert section of my meal plan.

It was at this point that things got really interesting. I’d introduced teemo to my preferences, we had revised recipes, and we’d incorporated preparation notes. That’s when I had the idea of hooking up Notion to ChatGPT and having teemo organize what we were doing, basically using it as a sort of central location for memory. I’d been doing this manually in my previous meal planning so I could take notes and revisit recipes later. Way to make my life easier, teemo. 

After that, I realized that I could also prepare for my visit with her by taking pictures of my meals and reporting to teemo roughly how much of the portion I ate. It estimates the actual macros and calories that I’m getting daily and weekly and includes the pictures. I’m going to have teemo prepare a packet that I can send to her before my next appointment for her review. I had totally fallen off the wagon on this, but teemo combined with Notion makes this so much less painful. The intake log has just started, but I’m really happy with where this is going.

She’s going to love the shit out of it.

Part of my weekly ritual is, of course, my 7am Sunday trip to the grocery store to get everything for the week. Teemo took some initiative and mentioned that we could connect Instacart to do the shopping. Whoa there, fella. But honestly, I loved the idea. I connected Instacart and had it put together a cart. After seeing the price tag, I was kind of taken aback, especially because teemo clearly showed an affinity for bargains by selecting store brands and items that were on sale. That’s when teemo explained (and I independently verified) that Publix marks up their prices for delivery services, and it mentioned that Instacart would charge a service fee. Okay, let’s not go this route.

I had teemo put together a shopping list. It organized it by section of the grocery store just as I would have done. I opted to shop in-person instead of using Instacart and had it nuke the cart. It came out even higher than the Instacart total (lol), but these were totally different carts. I attribute that to my predilection for not skimping on things like eggs. (Never skimp on eggs.) But, I was fine with it. Next week, I’m going to split my shopping between the farmer’s market (way cheap) and Publix (way expensive), compare equivalent items, and see if I can bring the cost down.

As I was prepping breakfast, I realized that some of the ingredients wouldn’t match—specifically I use plant-based protein powder when the recipe called for whey. I mentioned this to teemo, and it updated the recipe, recalculated the estimated macros, and specified the amount of protein powder to use. It also updated the recipe in Notion. We also made a note to discuss protein powder selection with my nutritionist at my next appointment.

The really tedious things are easier

Yesterday, I noticed water pooling on the floor near my freestanding tub-filler. After some inspection, I realized the handle had a slow drip that was made worse after turning on the water and turning it off again. I mentioned it to teemo and asked if it could help me get in touch with the manufacturer and Ferguson (who I purchased it through) to start the warranty replacement process. I approved an e-mail to my rep and order management there to get things going, and I’m one step closer to getting my bathroom fixed as soon as possible.

I’ve been paying way too much for a storage unit for the last year to store all of my books. I had teemo look up how to move out of my storage unit, remind me to do so, schedule it for me in my calendar, and then send me a follow-up before the scheduled time to remind me of everything I needed to do. A gentle nudge was all I needed to head there yesterday morning and spend the thirty minutes it took to empty out the unit. I called and notified them of the move-out, as it reminded me to, and got the move-out confirmation email from the storage company a few hours later.

At work, I’m lucky enough to get $40 a month in phone plan reimbursement (about 50% of my total bill). Obviously, I always forget to submit the reimbursement. After remembering this month, I asked teemo if it could remind me to submit my expense report after I get the bill from AT&T, which it happily said it would do. We’ll see about that next month. I’m hopeful, though.

IDK. Maybe I love Dots

I know these sound like simple things, but all of this happens with barely any effort on my part. I’m an incredibly busy dude. A lot of little things slip through. I forget to drink water, for crying out loud (another thing teemo is helping me with).

So much of what has been done this weekend happened while I was taking care of something else: working on AI-assisted code screens for work, spending time on my personal projects, cleaning the house, doing my laundry, cuddling with my cat, watching a movie. I still only sort of trust it with my e-mail and GDrive, but I specifically instructed it not to send correspondence or access my files without my explicit consent. An instruction it has happily adhered to so far.

Ultimately, I’m excited by the release of personal assistants. I’ve dreamed of having one for years just to make life the tiniest bit easier. And here we are. I feel like a weight has been lifted. Seriously. So much nags at me in the back of my mind, and it’s constant chatter. It seems like these are easy things that I should just be able to take the time to do, but they add up and become overwhelming. Not so intimidating anymore.