The Shell & Email

Is email the best way to work when working with multiple agents at the same time? Each email thread is a session. And it supports group conversations.

See what I built on Github.

With email. you’re not chained to a single company’s app or, even, your laptop. You can do it anywhere and email is the most versatile in poor network conditions, on top of that.

Email already solves the problem for working with people in an asynchronous and distributed way. Large language models get this, like they get the shell.

Background

We like the shell and the terminal that let’s us use it. And for practical reasons. The shell composes and enables interoperability with other applications without a gatekeeper. Once you get the hang of it, using the terminal is fun and liberating.

There is no coincidence that LLMs are most useful to us when harnessed to the shell. And if we need to work very closely with an agent, doing so from the terminal is best so we can be as close to the shell as possible.

I’m thankful for that. We mostly use Claude Code, Codex CLI, and others, such as OpenCode that uses the shell and are worked with by us on the terminal (uses the shell). We don’t have to use an iPhone App or some cloud based web app by a single company to use a computer productively.

However, there are clearly limitations when you must work with many agents. It’s dizzying. We often need to work asynchronously with agents working on different things. Stop. Do something else. Live life. Check on it a bit. Return to it easily on our own time, etc.

Again, email already solves the problem for working with people in an asynchronous and distributed way. That translates well when working with agents, and even other people and agents.

How I got here

After the first release of Machtiani over a year ago, I began feeding Machtiani’s answers back into its next instructions. I didn’t release until now to pursue this. An iterative instructions loop that drove a worker that is lightweight supervisor.

That lightweight supervisor can work with any agents already installed on your computer.

I found email be the most natural and liberating way to work with others and agents together.

See Machtiani on GitHub.

—David