One front door: stop making AI guess your intent

I was capturing work in eight places and finding it in none of them. Links in one app, ideas in another, tasks somewhere else — plus five agents that couldn't see each other's work.

The problem was never lost data. It was that I couldn't get anything back out.

Destination is the decision

The fix was one front door. Everything goes to a chat app. Which chat you send it to decides where it ends up. No model guessing whether this message is a task, a note, or a file.

A pattern that survives real ops

• One chat = inbox / capture only
• One chat = tasks that need a date or owner
• One chat = reference that should be searchable later
• One chat = "talk to me" — answers, not filing

Under the hood mine routed Telegram, Slack, iMessage, CLI, and cron into a gateway, then into one sqlite store with full-text search, then out to Obsidian, Todoist, and Drive. The topology can change. The rule shouldn't: destination decides home.

Start smaller than Hermes

You don't need nine apps. Pick two capture surfaces you already use and one filing home. Make the routing boring. If the agent has to be clever about intent, your front door is wrong.