PR Reminder: From Email Chaos to Slack Magic ⚡
This is a submission for the Postmark Challenge: Inbox Innovators.
What I Built
I created PR Reminder - an intelligent email processing system that automatically transforms GitHub PR notifications into beautifully formatted Slack messages. But here's the twist: it's not just for GitHub! This system can bridge any important emails to modern communication platforms like Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, or even custom webhooks.
The Core Problem: Developers are drowning in email notifications. GitHub sends PR notifications to email, but we live in Slack. Important emails get buried in overflowing inboxes, leading to missed code reviews, delayed responses, and broken team workflows.
The Solution: PR Reminder intelligently:
- 🔄 Automatically processes inbound emails via Postmark
- 🧠 Intelligently extracts structured data using AI-powered parsing
- 🎯 Routes notifications to the right communication channels
- 📊 Provides analytics and management dashboards
- 🔧 Supports custom filtering and routing rules
Key Features Showcased:
1. Automatic Email Processing
2. Smart PR Detection
- Parses GitHub notification emails (including forwarded ones!)
- Extracts: Repository, PR title, status, links, author
- Handles multiple email formats and edge cases
3. Beautiful Slack Integration
- Rich message formatting with status indicators
- Clickable buttons and interactive elements
- Team-specific customization
4. Management Dashboard
Demo
🎬 Watch the Full Demo on YouTube
Demo available at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftPtwdTquQ]
Code Repository
🔗 Backend: [https://github.com/barth007/supreme-octo-palm-tree.git]
Frontend: [https://github.com/barth007/Pr_reminder.git]
Tech Stack Architecture:
Data Flow:
📧 Email → 🔄 Postmark → 🧠 AI Parser → 💾 Database → 🚀 Slack
↓
🎯 Smart Routing → 📊 Analytics → 🔧 User Control
Key Files:
-
/app/api/v1/endpoints/postmark_webhook.py- Core email processing -
/app/services/pr_perser_service.py- AI-powered email parsing -
/app/services/slack_notification_service.py- Slack integration -
/components/dashboard-screen.tsx- Management interface
How I Built It
🚀 Development Journey
Phase 1: The Email Processing Engine
Postmark's inbound email webhooks became the foundation. The elegance of receiving structured JSON for any email sent to a custom address was game-changing:
@router.post("/inbound")
async def process_postmark_webhook(webhook_data: PostmarkInboundWebhook):
# Extract recipient to identify user
recipient_email = extract_recipient_email(webhook_data)
user = find_user_by_email(db, recipient_email)
# Parse email content intelligently
extracted_data = extract_pr_data(webhook_data)
# Store and auto-send to Slack
notification = create_pr_notification(db, webhook_data, extracted_data, user)
trigger_slack_notification(notification)
Phase 2: Intelligent Email Parsing
The challenge was making sense of messy email formats. GitHub sends different structures, Gmail forwards add layers, and users have various forwarding setups. I built a robust parser that:
- Detects forwarded vs. direct emails
- Extracts repository names from subjects like
[owner/repo] - Parses PR status, numbers, and links from email bodies
- Handles HTML and plain text formats gracefully
Phase 3: Real-time Slack Integration
Using Slack's Block Kit for rich formatting was crucial. Instead of plain text, users get:
- 🟢 Status indicators (Open/Merged/Closed)
- 📂 Repository and author information
- 🔗 Direct links to PRs
- ⏰ Time-aware formatting
Phase 4: The Management Dashboard
Built with Next.js and TypeScript, featuring:
- Real-time notification tracking
- Advanced filtering and search
- Export capabilities for analytics
- User-friendly setup flows
🛠 Postmark Experience
What Made Postmark Exceptional:
- Webhook Reliability: Zero downtime, consistent delivery
- Rich Data Format: Structured JSON with headers, HTML/text bodies
- Easy Authentication: HTTP Basic Auth kept security simple
- Excellent Documentation: Quick integration, clear examples
- Flexible Routing: Custom email addresses for user identification
Technical Integration:
# Postmark webhook payload structure was perfect for our needs
class PostmarkInboundWebhook(BaseModel):
MessageID: str
From: EmailStr
Subject: str
TextBody: Optional[str]
HtmlBody: Optional[str]
# ... rich metadata for intelligent processing
🌟 Beyond GitHub: The Bigger Vision
This system isn't limited to PR notifications! Real-world use cases include:
📈 Business Intelligence
- Sales notifications → Slack channels
- Customer support tickets → Discord
- Server alerts → WhatsApp groups
🏢 Enterprise Workflows
- Invoice notifications → Teams channels
- HR updates → Employee apps
- Security alerts → SOC platforms
🤖 IoT & Automation
- Smart home alerts → Mobile push
- Manufacturing updates → Dashboard widgets
- Health monitor data → Family WhatsApp
The architecture supports custom parsing rules, multiple destination platforms, and intelligent routing based on content analysis.
💡 Key Learnings
- Email is Universal: Every system can send emails, making this a perfect integration point
- Parsing is Hard: Real-world email formats are messier than specs suggest
- User Experience Matters: Seamless OAuth flows and zero-configuration setups drive adoption
- Reliability is King: Users trust their critical notifications to your system
🚀 What's Next
- AI-Powered Smart Routing: Use LLMs to understand email content and route intelligently
- Multi-Platform Support: WhatsApp, Discord, Teams, custom webhooks
- Template Engine: User-defined formatting rules
- Analytics Dashboard: Delivery rates, response times, team insights
- Mobile App: Native iOS/Android for on-the-go management
Ready to Transform Your PR Workflow?
Try PR Reminder today, explore the code, and imagine a world where important emails never get lost in the noise again. With Postmark's robust infrastructure and a bit of creative engineering, we're building bridges between the old world of email and the modern world of team collaboration.
Thanks for reading! Questions, feedback, or collaboration ideas? Let's connect! 🚀
PR Reminder showcases the power of Postmark's inbound email processing, demonstrating how reliable email infrastructure can enable innovative communication workflows. From GitHub to Slack, and beyond to any platform imaginable - the possibilities are endless.
Top comments (13)
Love this! The AI parsing plus Slack formatting makes a huge difference - I've definitely missed PRs in my inbox before. How robust is it with weird forwarded email chains or messy notification formats?
Thanks! I'm really glad you see the value in it. The system is built to be quite robust, even when dealing with messy or forwarded email chains. Since GitHub notifications follow a fairly consistent structure, Postmark helps by parsing those emails into clean JSON, which my app then processes to extract key information like the PR title, link, repository, status, and author. I’ve also added logic to handle forwarded messages, whether users add extra notes or not, and it works well across different forwarding formats including mobile email forwards and long CC threads. The Slack messages are formatted for clarity, stripping away noise so the notifications are clean and actionable. That said, I will continuously refining the parser, and if an edge case ever slips through, users can flag it directly so I can improve it even further.
Super smart! The AI parsing and custom routing make a real difference for team notifications.
Any plans for native integration with tools like Teams or WhatsApp next?
Thank you very much! Off course i have plans for that.
This has lots of usability. Weldone. I personally get lost in the mail spam from gitlab during work. And I think this would be very beneficial to me at the very least. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much my Boss I really appreciate the kind words! It's exactly that feeling of getting buried under GitHub or GitLab notification overload that inspired this project. The goal is to bring some calm to the chaos by highlighting only what truly needs your attention, so you don’t miss critical PRs or get distracted by noise. I'm glad to hear it resonates with you, and I’ll definitely keep building thanks again for the encouragement!
Insightful!
Cool idea, awesome project!
Thanks bro
Pretty cool seeing someone finally tame all that notification nonsense tbh you think this kinda workflow could cut down on all the random distractions too or does it just move the problem around
That’s a really thoughtful question and exactly the kind of feedback that wiil help me refine the product. The aim isn’t just to shift the noise from your inbox to Slack, but to make the signal-to-noise ratio much stronger. Instead of reacting to every ping, this kind of workflow helps you surface the things that actually matter like time-sensitive actions, team dependencies, or unreviewed work in a focused, structured way. In that sense, it can definitely reduce random distractions by acting as a smart filter layer, not just a forwarding system. Of course, like any tool, it’s only as effective as the rules and context it's given, but done right, it helps you stay aligned without drowning in notifications.
Nice
Project Overview
An intelligent email processing system that converts GitHub PR notifications into Slack messages and other platforms.
Core Problem
Developers struggle with overwhelming email notifications from GitHub, causing missed reviews and workflows.
Solution: PR Reminder Features
Key Features
Technological Architecture
Postmark Advantages
Future Developments
Potential Applications
Key Learnings
made with love by axrisi
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