Show HN: I built a tool to create AI agents that live in iMessage

28•danielsdk•5d ago

Hey everyone, I made this thing: https://tryflux.ai/

Context: I've tried probably 15 different AI apps over the past year. ChatGPT, note-taking apps, productivity apps, all of it. But most of them are just clutter on my iphone.

They live in some app I have to deliberately open. And I just... don't. But you know what I open 50 times a day without thinking? iMessage. So out of mild frustration with the "AI app graveyard" on my phone, I built Flux.

What it does: - You describe a personality and what you want the agent to do - In about 2 minutes, you have a live AI agent in iMessage - Blue bars. Native. No app download for whoever texts it.

The thesis that got us here: AI is already smart enough. The bottleneck is interaction. Dashboards get forgotten. Texts get answered.

This was also my first time hitting #1 on Product Hunt, which was surreal.

We're very early and probably broke something. If you try it, feedback is super welcome, weird edge cases, "this doesn't work," or "why would anyone use this" comments all help.

That's all. Happy to answer questions.

Comments

_menelaus•2d ago

Hi! I'm sure this is very cool, but want to know what this does before I try it. I typed in the chat: what does this do? Will you build me an agent behind a phone number I can chat with? And it tried to open up iMessage which I denied because IDK in the first place what this is.

lisp2240•2d ago

I want to know what this is and what it does before I give it permissions.

johnneville•2d ago

united has free messaging on their flights and i found myself using meta's ai chatbot via whatsapp a few times. it's system prompt forces it to ask me inane questions at the end of every action so i would be happy to switch to something else.

just tried making one using this and it initially was way too casual for me and i didn't like how it split responses into many messages but it's very responsive to my prompts to change its style.

joshribakoff•2d ago

I tried this and the flow is sketchy UX even if it’s probably not malicious. It opens Messages, has you send a code to a number they control, and that “verifies” you. Probably to multiplex many chats on one phone number. That’s not a takeover by itself (you’re not forwarding a bank/Apple 2FA), but it’s sketchy. It also doesn’t work. It said hello and stopped replying.

leonmoonen•2d ago

This seems to be a wrapper around LangAgents that can be linked to iMessage. I would not say the agents "live in iMessage," rather that they interface through iMesssage.

You can find a bit more on what's (likely) behind this in the github repo: https://github.com/photon-hq/flux

(NB: the deployed version may not be exactly the same as the code in the repo)

zatkin•18h ago

I asked it to build me a weather machine and it's responding to me like a teenager.

AI: Authentication successful! Go back to the webpage to continue.

Me: Hey!

AI: yooo whats good!! u got any weather stuff u wanna chat about or just saying hi?

Me: how’s the weather in New York City

AI: ohh nah i don't have real-time data so i can't tell u the actual conditions rn! but if u check like weather.com or just search "nyc weather" u'll get the live stuff instantly tho if u tell me whats goin on there rn i can get HYPED abt the atmospheric conditions!! like is it humid?? what's the pressure doin??

Jeremy1026•18h ago

So, about as useful as a teenager. Source: I was a teenager once.

saaaaaam•17h ago

Less useful than a teenager. A teenager today would just look at their weather app and tell you the answer.

falloutx•17h ago

probably uses some free model, like shapes.inc bots we had to discord couple months back

saaaaaam•17h ago

I asked it to build an app to track water consumption and medication. It can’t track anything. After logging “water consumption” and “taking medication” I asked it how much water I’d had and when I’d taken medication. It replied “mhm thats whats up” (like that - lowercase and no apostrophes)

Is that expected behaviour?

The tiresome bro-speak is very irritating but I’m maybe not the target audience.

quietsegfault•12h ago

There are many things named flux. It’s not a big deal for one more, but maybe a more unique, descriptive name would differentiate.

hestefisk•4h ago

I get timeouts on the app. Not impressed, sorry.

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