tl;dr – USPS Mail Alerts (GitHub repo here) is a Google Apps Script that automatically creates Google Tasks reminders based on USPS Informed Delivery emails.
I remember the first time I stumbled across Google Apps Script in college, my mind was blown to pieces. The sheer possibilities of extending the capabilities of your Google apps was inviting, even though I couldn’t write a lick of code back then (I still can’t write now. I just understand it better). Fast-forward to today, and the itch to build cool stuff never left me. The twist is that LLMs can now write code for you. I started by conjuring complex Google Sheets formulas with AI chatbots, then quickly graduated to building Apps Scripts. It’s been a wild journey. And today, I’d love to share one of those projects with you—my USPS Mail Alerts Apps Script.
The Idea
It all started in the summer of 2023. I had just moved to the United States six months prior and signed up for a free USPS service called Informed Delivery. They basically send you an email in the morning if you have any physical mail heading your way that day. Being the diligent mailbox checker that I am, this was a lifesaver because it saved me from frequent trips to a disappointingly empty mailbox.
But then, I thought, what if I could make this process even smoother? That’s when the LLM craze hit, and I decided to build something nifty to make my mail-checking experience better.
v1 – Check email and create task
My initial idea was simple: build an Apps Script to scan those Informed Delivery emails and create a task in Google Tasks if a new email showed up. Here’s the flow I came up with::
- I created a Gmail filter to move the USPS emails to a specific label.
- The script scanned that label for new emails and added a task to Google Tasks if it found one.
See the code snippet for v1:
function createTaskForNewEmails() {
var labelName = 'a--notify/2-informed delivery';
var taskTitle = 'Pick up mails'; //
var label = GmailApp.getUserLabelByName(labelName);
if (label === null) {
console.log('Label not found.');
return;
}
var threads = label.getThreads();
for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
var today = new Date();
var thread = threads[i];
var messages = thread.getMessages();
var lastMessage = messages[messages.length - 1];
var messageDate = lastMessage.getDate();
// Create a new task
var task = Tasks.newTask();
task.title = taskTitle;
task.due = dueDate.toISOString();
// Save the task
var taskListId = 'taskID'; // Replace with your task list ID
Tasks.Tasks.insert(task, taskListId);
break; // Exit the loop after creating a task for the first new email
}
}
}You can already tell some of the problems with v1:
- If USPS changed their email formatting and it breaks my filter, I wouldn’t receive the emails under the label, which meant no reminders.
- If I didn’t clear the reminder after picking up even one piece of mail, my Google Tasks would get clogged.
- Picking up mail one piece at a time was ridiculously inefficient.
v2 – Make it better!
In just one year, the models got incredibly better. Everyone was experimenting with more complex apps including me. I even built a fortune cookie app but I digress. Inspired by how far AI-assisted coding had come, I redesigned my mail alert apps script and fired up my AI chatbots to help code it.
What I improved:
- Instead of relying on labels, the script now scans the inbox directly for USPS Informed Delivery emails.
- It identifies how many mail pieces are expected and includes that number in the task description so I don’t rush to the mailbox if it’s just one letter.
- It checks if a task already exists for the day and updates it rather than creating a new one. It even accumulates the total count of mail pieces, so I only check the mailbox when it’s worth the trip.
- Introduced an ad-checker to detect if the email is just an ad. Because why waste a trip if it’s all spammy promos and no physical mail at all?
Today, I’m open-sourcing v2 of this script so we can all improve our mailbox-checking experience and optimize our laziness (I mean efficiency 😂) together. See the GitHub repo here. You can also find the README in the GitHub repo, with straightforward instructions even for folks who don’t code.
Let me know what you think! And if you have any suggestions or improvements, feel free to contribute.
Stay building! 🚀