Inbox

The Inbox is the message hub for your whole workforce. Every worker gets their own mailbox, Theodor pinned first as your own line in, and a separate Log of the hand-offs workers make to each other. Once you connect an external channel (email, Signal, WhatsApp…), the messages that arrive there land here too — so you read and triage everything in one organised place.

How to get here

Click 📥 Inbox in the sidebar. A badge shows your total unread count.

The mailbox rail

The left rail lists every mailbox. You & Theodor sits at the top — that’s your own inbox; anything sent here goes to Theodor, who reads it and acts. Below, one row per worker, each with its own unread badge. Use Find a mailbox… to filter the list, and drag the divider to resize the rail (the width is remembered).

Above the list is the Channels strip. Each chip is an external channel: a green ● means it’s connected (click it to open that channel’s chat), a plain chip means it’s available to set up, and a dimmed one is coming in a future release. ⚙︎ Manage jumps to Settings → Channels to connect one.

Inbox vs. Log

Each mailbox has two tabs:

• 📥 Inbox — real messages for that worker: system alerts, due-soon reminders, and — once a channel is connected — incoming email, Signal, WhatsApp, and the rest.
• 📞 Log — the worker-to-worker call trail: who assigned a task to whom, status updates, and comments. It’s split out so this hand-off telemetry doesn’t bury your actual messages.

Built on notifications

Today the Inbox is built entirely on askTheodor’s existing notification system — no external account required to start using it. Connecting email or a messenger simply routes those messages into the same mailboxes, where your workers (and Theodor) can read and act on them.

Reading and triaging

• Unread items carry a dot and a bolder title; click one to mark it read and jump to its source — the task, Plan, conversation, or Company it refers to opens directly. If there’s nothing to jump to, the card just expands to show the full text.
• ✓ Mark all read clears a whole mailbox at once.
• Search, an Unread filter, and Newest / Oldest sorting help you find things fast.
• Toggle between ☰ Timeline (a flat chronological feed, like a phone chat) and 🧵 Threads (grouped by the task each message belongs to). In Timeline, near-identical nudges about the same thing collapse into one card with a “+N more like this · mark all read” shortcut, so repeated reminders never flood the view.

In You & Theodor, a 💬 Talk to Theodor button opens a direct chat so you can delegate or ask him to act on what just arrived.

Use Theodor’s mailbox as your action desk

Forward the things you want handled into You & Theodor (or connect a channel that routes there). Because Theodor reads this mailbox and can act, it becomes a lightweight “deal with this for me” queue rather than just a list of alerts.

In practice

You & Theodor works best as an action desk, not a notification list. Because Theodor reads that mailbox and can act on what’s in it, anything you route there becomes a “deal with this” queue — forward the thing, then ask him to handle it. Treating it as a passive feed wastes the one mailbox that has an agent attached.

The Log tab is where you audit delegation. Assignments, status changes and comments between workers live there rather than in the Inbox, so your actual messages don’t get buried under hand-off telemetry. When you want to know how a task travelled — who assigned it, who picked it up, when it changed state — that’s the tab.

Jump-to-source is the fast path. Clicking an unread item opens the task, Plan, conversation or Company it refers to, so triage is one click rather than “note the reference, go find it.” Work the unread filter top to bottom and you’ll clear a morning’s backlog without navigating manually.

Collapsed nudges keep a busy workspace readable. Repeated due-soon reminders about the same task fold into a single card with “+N more like this.” If you’re seeing that a lot, it’s usually a signal about the task — something is genuinely stuck — not about the Inbox.

It works before you connect anything. The Inbox runs on askTheodor’s own notification system, so there’s real content in it from day one. Connecting email or a messenger routes those messages into the same mailboxes; it isn’t a prerequisite for the screen to be useful.

🎓 Learn it hands-on: OAuth sign-in

Terms in this page

• Inbox — the unified message hub: one mailbox per worker, plus your own (Theodor’s).
• Mailbox — one worker’s stream of messages and the hand-offs they were part of.
• Theodor — the built-in chief-of-staff; his mailbox is pinned first and doubles as your own inbox.
• Notification — the underlying record the Inbox is built on: a system alert, reminder, or hand-off event.
• Unread badge — the small count showing how many messages in a mailbox you haven’t read yet.
• Channel — an external messaging service (email, Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord) you can connect so its messages arrive in the Inbox.
• Log tab — the timeline of worker-to-worker calls: assignments, status changes, and comments.
• Hand-off — when one worker passes work to another (e.g. assigning a task); recorded in the Log.
• Due-soon — a reminder that a task’s deadline is approaching.
• Mark-read — flagging a message as seen, which also clears it from the unread count.
• Jump-to-source — opening the task, Plan, conversation, or Company a message refers to, straight from the message.
• Timeline vs. Threads — two display modes: a flat chronological feed, or messages grouped by the task they belong to.
• Telemetry — automatically recorded activity data (here, the worker-to-worker hand-off events shown in the Log).