, by The Pippin team
An AI to-do list app on a busy workday
What does an AI to-do list app do all day? Follow one example workday with Pippin on a Mac: the tasks it added, the ones it updated and the ones it checked off.
i keep the list.
An AI to-do list app like Pippin keeps your list for you while you work. It reads the text on your Mac screen, adds a task when something new comes up, updates it as the work changes, and checks it off when you’re done. To show what that looks like in practice, here is one example workday from start to finish.
Maya is an example we made up for this post, not a real customer. Her day is typical of a lot of office jobs, and every row below is written the way Pippin writes rows.
Who Maya is
Maya is a marketing manager at a mid-size company in Chicago. Her work arrives through Gmail in Chrome, Slack, Google Docs and a lot of meetings. She has tried three to-do apps. Each one worked for a few weeks and then fell behind, the way most lists do.
She set up Pippin on a Monday. She signed in to the ChatGPT Mac app so Pippin could use her ChatGPT plan, turned on Accessibility, and blocked her banking app and her personal Messages. Then she went back to work.
8:45 AM: email first
Maya opens Gmail with her coffee. The printer for the fall catalog needs the signed contract back by Thursday. She reads it, means to deal with it later, and moves on.
A row shows up in Recents:
Send the signed contract to Lakeshore Print They need it back by Thursday.
She drags it onto her To-do list. That’s the only thing she does with it this morning.
9:30 AM: a request in Slack
Jordan, from sales, posts in a Slack thread: “Can you send me the final launch deck before my call with Acme tomorrow?”
Maya replies with a thumbs-up and opens the deck to look at it. Pippin writes a row:
Final launch deck for Jordan Jordan needs it before the Acme call tomorrow. The deck still has draft pricing.
The second sentence comes from the deck itself, which was open on her screen.
10:00 AM to noon: meetings
Maya spends two hours on video calls. Pippin doesn’t listen to calls. It reads text only, so the meetings themselves aren’t part of its picture.
After the second call, she types her notes into a Google Doc, including “I’ll pull the September email numbers for Priya.” Pippin reads the doc and adds a row:
September email numbers for Priya Promised in the planning meeting notes.
12:30 PM: lunch and a pause
At lunch Maya wants to do some personal shopping and look up a doctor. She clicks the small cat in the menu bar, picks Pause screen awareness, and chooses 1 hour. Pippin reads nothing until the hour is up.
1:30 PM: the deck goes out
Back at her desk, Maya fixes the pricing in the deck and sends it to Jordan in Slack. Pippin sees the message go out and closes “Final launch deck for Jordan.” The row moves to the Logbook under today.
Sending the deck was enough. She never had to check it off herself.
2:45 PM: a plan changes
The client emails: the product launch is moving from November 5 to November 12. That affects the email schedule Maya has been building.
Pippin already had a row from Monday, “Draft the launch email schedule.” Its summary changes:
Draft the launch email schedule The launch moved to November 12. The draft still uses November 5.
Maya didn’t have to remember to fix the task. The row now tells her what to fix in the work.
3:30 PM: the contract
Maya signs the contract with Lakeshore Print and emails it back. Pippin closes the row. It’s Tuesday, two days before the deadline.
5:30 PM: “what’s still open?”
Before she logs off, Maya opens the chat and asks:
Maya: what’s still open from today?
Pippin: two things. the september email numbers for priya, and the launch email schedule, which still uses november 5.
Maya: add the priya one to my list
Pippin: done. it’s on your to-do list.
Tomorrow morning, her To-do list will match her work. She didn’t type a single task to get there.
What Pippin handled in one day
| Row | Where it came from | What Pippin did |
|---|---|---|
| Send the signed contract to Lakeshore Print | Gmail | Added it, then closed it when the signed copy went out |
| Final launch deck for Jordan | Slack and the deck | Added it with the draft-pricing note, then closed it when the deck was sent |
| September email numbers for Priya | Meeting notes in Google Docs | Added it from a promise in the notes |
| Draft the launch email schedule | Monday’s work | Updated it when the launch date moved |
Maya’s part was small. She moved two rows onto her To-do list and asked one question. Pippin did the adding, the updating and the checking off.
What made the difference
A normal to-do app would have needed four new tasks typed in, one task edited and two checked off, all during a day of email, Slack and meetings. That’s exactly the upkeep that made Maya give up before. With Pippin, the list kept up with her day instead of the other way around.
She also stayed in control. New rows waited in Recents until she picked them, her private apps were blocked, and she paused reading when she wanted to.
Try it on your own workday
Pippin runs on a Mac with macOS 15 or later and Apple silicon, and it uses the AI you already have: your ChatGPT plan, a Claude API key or an OpenRouter key. For more on how it works, read keeping a to-do list up to date is the real work and how to keep track of tasks from email and Slack. Before you install, read what Pippin reads on your Mac, and what it never reads. Then get started from the Pippin home page.