Never Leave Your Inbox 📥 A Task Manager Powered by Simple Email Replies

#devchallenge #postmarkchallenge #webdev #api

Hello everyone! This is my submission for the Postmark Challenge: Inbox Innovators on DEV.to. I decided to tackle a common problem for many of us: tasks that originate from emails often force us to switch contexts, copy-pasting content into a separate to-do application.

My solution? An application that transforms your email client into a fully-fledged, conversational task manager.

The Core Idea: Email as an Interface

Instead of just being a place where tasks arrive, what if the inbox could be the interface where you manage their entire lifecycle?

My project allows a user to:

Create a task by sending a simple email.
Receive an instant confirmation that creates a conversational thread.
Update, comment on, and complete the task just by replying to that thread with simple commands.

This creates a seamless workflow, keeping the user right where they are, without ever needing to open another app.

How It Works: The Conversational Flow

The magic happens through a combination of Postmark's Inbound and Outbound APIs and a command parser built in Laravel. The entire flow is conversational.

Here is a sequence diagram illustrating the process:

Let's see it in action with a simple story: updating a page on a website.

1. The First Email (Task Creation)

I send an email to the system's inbound address. The body contains a description of the task and some commands to set the priority and due date right away.

Subject: 📄 Update 'About Us' page on the company website

Body:

The 'About Us' page is outdated. Please update the text to reflect our new company values and add the latest team photos. The photo assets are in the shared drive.

#priority medium

My application receives this, creates the task, sets the priority, and cleans the description.

2. The Reply (Adding a Comment)

After receiving the confirmation email, I can reply to it to add a comment or ask a question.

Subject: Re: [TASK-2] 📄 Update 'About Us' page on the company website

Body:

The content team is ready to start, but they have a question first. 🤔

#comment Should we also update the individual team member bios, or just the main company description for now?

The application receives this reply, finds the original task, and attaches the new comment.

3. The Final Reply (Task Completion)

Once the work is done, a final reply with the #complete command is all that's needed.

Subject: Re: [TASK-2] 📄 Update 'About Us' page on the company website

Body:

Just confirmed with the director. For now, only update the main company description.

#comment The content team has confirmed the changes are now live on the site. Everything looks great. ✔️
#complete

The task is now automatically marked as completed in the UI.

The Tech Stack

To bring this idea to life, I used the following technologies:

Backend: Laravel 12
Email Processing: Postmark API (Inbound and Outbound)
Frontend: Livewire with Blade
UI & Icons: Tailwind CSS & Blade Heroicons
Testing: Pest (PHP Testing Framework)

A Glimpse into the Implementation

One of the core components is a CommandParser service in Laravel. It uses a simple but powerful regex-based approach to find and process commands within the email body. This service is responsible for updating the task's attributes or creating related records, like comments.

Another key piece was using Laravel's event system. By listening to the MessageSent event, the application captures the unique Message-ID of the outgoing confirmation email. This ID could be used in the future to build an even more robust system for threading replies.

Live Demo in Action

To demonstrate the application's flow in real-time, I recorded a short video showing the complete lifecycle of a task, from creation to completion, all managed via email.

youtu.be/NDFgcH2X1ZI

Conclusion

This project was a fantastic exercise in thinking about email not just as a destination, but as an interactive platform. By leveraging Postmark's powerful APIs, it's possible to build truly innovative and seamless workflows that meet users where they already are: their inbox.

Thank you for the challenge!

Find the full source code on my GitHub repository: Interactive-email-management