Everyday automation · Earlier workflow and lessons
The morning report, and knowing when to stop adding more
I built a morning report that brought useful information together in Obsidian. I also learned that adding more scheduled messages could make the system harder to live with.
One of my earlier Hermes projects was a Morning Report. It gathered things such as my calendar, weather, tasks and travel information, then put the fuller record into my Daily Notes in Obsidian. Scheduled jobs, including Hermes cron jobs, were part of exploring how to have useful information ready when I needed it.
For the parts with predictable inputs and outputs, I used coding assistance to create repeatable scripts and API connections. The system didn’t need a language model to improvise the same collection of steps every morning.
I went on to add other reminders, reports and planning routines. Some of them became noise, and I removed them. It was a useful correction: I enjoy building these systems, but I still have to live with what they put in front of me.
That thinking carries into my September testing plan. I want to ask whether a component solves a problem I still have, and whether it deserves the attention it takes to maintain. There should also be room to enjoy an experiment without quietly making it essential to everyday life.
From my project notes
What came out of it
A Morning Report workflow wrote gathered information into Obsidian. Later scheduled nudges and reports were pruned when they became noisy.