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If you could have an AI assistant that texts you, what would you want it to do?
We covered Poke a while back, it’s the AI that lives in your iMessage, knows your inbox better than you do, and charges you whatever it thinks you're worth.
If you missed it, catch up here.
Since then: someone on Twitter this week renamed their Poke contact to Donna.
Donna Paulsen, from Suits.
The assistant who already knows what you need before you walk into the room, and will absolutely call you out if you drop the ball.
Poke's response there explains the product better than any feature list.
Anyway, Poke just launched Recipes. And I cooked up a few, but before we get into it, some catchup:
NEWS NEWS NEWS
So what's a Recipe?
Before this, Poke was reactive.
You texted it and it responded. It was useful, but not that different from just having Claude in your messages.
Recipes make it proactive.
You go to poke.com/kitchen, describe what you want in plain English, and Poke figures out which of your accounts it needs to connect, builds the automation, and runs it on a schedule.
That’s what the documentation says but really you can just text it and it’ll do the work for you.
Recipe 1: the one that roasted me
I typed: "Every morning, check if I logged a Strava activity yesterday. Congratulate me if I did. Make fun of me if I didn't."
Poke: "on it, love the energy. let me cook that up for you."
It then sent me a Strava login link and said: "once that's linked i'll start checking every morning at 8am. prepare to get bullied if you slack off."
I did not work out yesterday because Monday blues and here is what I woke up to.
I deserved every word of that.
The fact that I built this by typing one sentence is insane to me. If you have a Strava account, this is the first recipe you should build.
Recipe 2: the accountability loop
This one has no integration. Just Poke and a promise you make to yourself.
I described it as: "Every Sunday night, ask me what my one priority is for the week. Text me that priority every morning at 9am until I tell you it's done."
Every morning it texted: "good morning vaibhav! your priority this week: get project-glide demo live internally"
I replied that it was done on Thursday. Poke marked it complete and said it would check back Sunday at 8pm for the next one.
The reason I like this one is it forces you to pick ONE thing.
Recipe 3: the inbox audit
I typed: "Every evening at 7pm, send me a list of emails I haven't replied to that look important."
Poke: "all set vaibhav. i'll scan all three of your gmail accounts every day and hit you up at 7pm with the ones that actually need a reply"
I asked for a dry run immediately.
I usually respond to most emails that I am supposed to, but incase a couple of them get missed, poke surfaces them promptly and no more “Sorry I missed this” anymore.
Recipes worth trying this week
Found these on poke.com/recipes and around the internet:
Generate a photorealistic candid phone photo of a chunky ginger-and-white bicolor cat.
A daily emotional check-in companion that asks how your day went, responds with empathy and humor, and sends a weekly summary of your highs and lows, no advice, just good vibes.
Automatically send your partner a cute plushie or animal image on a recurring schedule, a little surprise to brighten their day.
Instantly create and share scheduling links so others can book time with you, works with cal.com, Notion Calendar, Google Calendar, and more.
Then I asked Poke itself
I asked Poke what else it would recommend for my readers. It came back with three.
That screenshot is a better pitch for Recipes than anything I could write. Go try it.
For the builders
Everything above was built with plain English in the Kitchen.
If you want to go deeper with custom integrations, your own data sources, or event-driven automations, there's an SDK.
Run npx poke in your terminal to get started.
You can build a recipe, publish it with a sharing link, and earn up to $1 per active user.
The whole creator economy thing is built in.
My Take
When I first covered Poke, I said I was still figuring out my killer use case.
Recipes answered that.
The product before this was interesting but not that different from having an AI in your messages.
Recipes make it a platform.
Anyone can now build an automation, share a link, and have people using it in thirty seconds.
That structure reminded me of WeChat mini programs.
In China, entire businesses run inside WeChat as lightweight apps.
Poke is doing something similar but through SMS and iMessage, which means it works on every phone that already exists.
The library is thin right now and most recipes are personal productivity stuff.
But the creator economy angle is gonna fuel a lot of interesting use cases.
Fun times.
Tried building a recipe? Reply and tell me what you made. Best one gets a shoutout next week.
Until next time,
Vaibhav 🤝🏻
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