Bot Fwd2Cal

Introducing Fwd2cal: A Free Bot That Automatically Adds Appointments to Your Calendar

The Frustration of Manual Calendar Management

It’s something we all do multiple times a week: We manually add things to our calendar while copying details over from an email. What if a bot could do that work for you?

The Solution: Fwd2cal

That’s the idea behind Fwd2cal, a currently free project by Moe Adham that can parse any email with an appointment in it and automatically add it to your calendar. If you get an email with a potential calendar appointment in it—a party invitation, a meeting, a coworker casually mentioning you can join them for drinks after work today—you can forward it to the free bot. The service uses ChatGPT to parse the email and find the relevant bits of information, then turn that information into a calendar appointment, then add that calendar appointment to your Google Calendar.

How It Works

The service couldn’t be easier to use, and the setup process isn’t too difficult. All you need to do is send an email to calendar@fwd2cal.com. You’ll get a message back, with a link, asking you to authorize your Google Calendar. You can add more email addresses by sending another email to the service—just put "add" followed by your second email address in the subject line and you’re done.

Using the Service

After connecting Fwd2cal to your Google Calendar, you can start using the service. You can forward any email mentioning an event happening—the bot will parse the email, turn it into a calendar appointment, then add it to your Google Calendar. If something goes wrong, you’ll get an email explaining that. If not, the service will quietly keep adding appointments to your calendar. You can even include instructions in the email, if you want, using the same phrasing you would use to talk to any AI chatbot. I’ve found the bot is pretty good at figuring out what you want.

Security and Transparency

This all requires putting a lot of trust in Adham, which he acknowledges on the website. The good news is that the project is distributed with an open source license, meaning the code is available online if you want to review it. The privacy policy also makes it clear that the only information the bot collects is what’s necessary to provide the service and that no personal information is stored long-term or used to train the AI model. The service runs on a combination of tools from Google Cloud, OpenAI, and SendGrid.

The Future of Fwd2cal

Fwd2cal is free, though that might change. "If this ever gets too popular and it costs too much to run, I’ll maybe start charging for it," Adham writes on the website. In the meantime, it’s a service that offers some great convenience.

FAQs

Q: How do I use Fwd2cal?
A: Send an email to calendar@fwd2cal.com and follow the instructions.

Q: What email providers is Fwd2cal compatible with?
A: Fwd2cal is compatible with Google Calendar.

Q: Is Fwd2cal secure?
A: Yes, the service uses an open source license and a clear privacy policy.

Q: Will Fwd2cal ever charge for its service?
A: Possibly, if the service becomes too popular and costs too much to run.