skill-the-cows-lists

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The Cows Lists

Interact with "Remember The Milk" list and task management ecosystem.

Description

This skill adds Remember The Milk support to Mycroft. The skill use Remember The Milk's rest interface. The purpose if the skill is to allow operations suited for a voice interface. It is not an attempt to cover all functionality of remember the milk.

An authentication flow must be executed before other operations can be done, see section Configuration Some advice on installation can be found in section Installation

The dialog

The cows lists work with lists and tasks. When you mention a list or a task in a command to the cows lists, it will be remenbered for a short time (2 minutes). The task or list is said to be in context. Whthin this time, further commands to the cows list will refer to the list and/or task in context. For instance:

• You: "Hey Mycroft, find bananas on the grocery list"
• Mycroft: "I found bananas on list grocery"
• You: "Hey Mycroft, complete it"
• Mycroft: "bananas on list grocery was marked complete"
• You: "Hey Mycroft, read the list"
• Mycroft: "List grocery has 3 tasks on it, potatos, apples, oranges"
• You: "Hey Mycroft, complete oranges"
• Mycroft: "oranges on list grocery was marked complete"

Some commands support special dialogs. For instance

• You: "Hey Mycroft, add bananas to the grocery list"
• Mycroft: "bananas was added to list grocery"
• You: "Hey Mycroft, add oranges"
• Mycroft: "oranges, anything else?"
• You: "appels"
• Mycroft: "apples, anything else?"
• You: "potatos"
• Mycroft: "potatos, anything else?"
• You: "no"
• Mycroft: "okay, the tasks are added to list grocery"

The skill will try to recognize mispronounced list or task names, for example:

• You: "Hey Mycroft, find call back on my bin box list"
• Mycroft: "I can't find a list called bin box, do you want to use the list inbox instead?"
• You: "yes"
• Mycroft: "I did not find call back, but i did find call home on list inbox"

Commands

This section lists all available commands.

In general, for all operations below, you can substitute "my" list with "the" list, i.e. "add milk to the grocery list" and "add milk to my grocery list" are both valid.

Be careful about using the word 'list' when you name the lists in Remember The Milk. For instance, the skill can handle a list called 'grocery' OR a list called 'grocery list', but if you have BOTH, the skill will only find the 'grocery list'.

Add a task

For example:

• "Hey Mycroft, add milk to my grocery list"
• "Hey Mycroft, add remember to call home to list Inbox"

The skill is using Remember The Milk "smart add" For example:

• "Hey Mycroft, add remember to call home tomorrow at 9 to list Inbox"

will add a task called "remember to call home" to the Remember The Milk's Inbox, and set the due date to tomorrow at 9. See also the due command later in this section.

Complete task

Complete a task on a list, the operation can be undone within 2 minutes:

• You: "Hey Mycroft, complete call home on my personal list"
• Mycroft: "Call home on list personal was marked complete"
• You: "Hey Mycroft, restore"
• Mycroft: "I have restored call home on list personal again"

Complete all tasks on a list

Complete all tasks on a list, this operation may take a while if there are many tasks. The operation can be undone within 2 minutes:

• You: "Hey Mycroft, complete all tasks on my grocery list"
• Mycroft: "3 tasks on list grocery was marked complete"
• You: "Hey Mycroft, restore"
• Mycroft: "I have restored 3 tasks on list grocery again"

To keep processing time down, a maximum of 40 tasks can be deleted for each complete list command. The RTM api has a rate limit of 1 call per second, 40 tasks will take approximately 40 seconds to complete. If you use the Mycroft "stop" command during processing, it may not be possible to undo the operation.

Due tasks

Find out what tasks are due. Due date can be one of: "now, yesterday, today, tomorrow, monday, tuesday, wedensday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday"

• You: "Hey Mycroft, what is on my inbox list today"

• Mycroft: "List inbox has 2 tasks on it, call home, go fishing"

• You: "Hey Mycroft, add go fishing today to the inbox list"

• Mycroft: "go fishing today was added to list inbox"

• You: "Hey Mycroft, what is due today"

• Mycroft: "List inbox has 1 task on it, that are due today, go fishing"

Find task on list

Find a task on a list:

• You: "Hey Mycroft, find milk on my grocery list"
• Mycroft: "I found milk on list grocery"

Read list

Read the tasks on a list:

• You: "Hey Mycroft, read list inbox"
• Mycroft: "List inbox has 2 tasks on it, call home, go fishing"

Undo

If an operation makes changes to your lists or tasks, it can be undone within 2 minutes, for example:

• You: "Hey Mycroft, add call home to list inbox"
• Mycroft: "call home was added to list inbox"
• You: "Hey Mycroft, undo"
• Mycroft: "I have removed call home from list inbox again"

The words "undo", "revert", "roll back" and "restore" can be used

Report an error

In case of a technical error, the cows lists will ask you if you want a mail with the details. Answer yes, and you will receive a mail from Mycroft with further details on how to report the issue, and all the details about the error. You receive the mail, it is not sent the skill developer. The mail contains detalis about how to report the error to the skill developer, and you decide what information to put in the issue report.

Other issues that are not caught as describe above, can be reported as well, on https://github.com/CarstenAgerskov/skill-the-cows-lists/issues

Installation

The best way to install the cows lists is to use Mycroft. Say:

• "Hey Mycroft, install the cows lists"

Or use msm from the command line.

When a new version of the Mycroft core is released, it may take some time for the Mycroft team to accept the skill. It is verified that the Skill still passes all tests and standards. During that time, the skill cannot be installed using the methods above. Likewise, it may take some time for emergency patches to pass the acceptance.

It is possible to install the skill directly from my repository instead, risking the consequences of the skill not passing the acceptance by the Mycroft team. And the skill will not auto update in case of new features or bugfixes.

The following commands installs the skill manually:

cd /opt/mycroft/skills/
git clone https://github.com/CarstenAgerskov/skill-the-cows-lists.git carstena-the-cows-lists
cd carstena-the-cows-lists/

Re-read the "Installation" section of the README.md after checkout, there may be some specifics for the branch you have chosen.

To be able to use the skill, some requirements must be installed:

cd <your mycroft-core directory>
# When using bash/zsh use source as shown below, otherwise consult the venv documentation
source .venv/bin/activate
cd /opt/mycroft/skills/carstena-the-cows-lists/
pip install -r requirements.txt

Configuration

To access your Remember The Milk account via the rest API, it is neccesary to apply for an API key at https://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/api/. Click on the "Apply for an API key" button, and fill in the information. You will get a mail from remember the milk containing:

• An api key
• A shared secret

Head over to https://home.mycroft.ai, log on, and go to "Skills" section. If you have installed the cows list skill, it is possible enter the api key and the secret from remember the milk in the configuration section "Skill the cows lists".

Then say "Hey Mycroft, authenticate with remember the milk"

Mycroft will send you a mail containing an authentication link, pointing to remember the milk. Click on the link, and authenticate Mycroft as described there.

After authentication with remember the milk, and only then, say:

"Hey Mycroft, get a token for remember the milk"

Now, Mycroft is ready to add tasks to your lists.

As an alternative, if you don't want to store your api key and secret at home.mycroft.ai, you can instead add the following to mycroft.conf:

  "TheCowsLists": {
    "api_key": "many_characters",
    "secret": "many_characters"
  }  

Troubleshooting

The cows lists is tested against a normal remember the milk account, not a Pro account. The language is set to "English US" in remember the milk, under settings->account. I have reports that some different language settings do not work with the cows lists.

If your token expire or become invalid

On rare occasions the token may expire or become invalid. In that case you must repeat the steps above. You still have to click on the authentication link in the mail, even though the page you are redirected to will say that you are already authenticated (you may have to log in, if your browser is not already logged in to remember the milk).

Examples

• ""Hey Mycroft, add milk to my grocery list""
• ""Hey Mycroft, add remember to call home tomorrow at 9 to list Inbox""

Credits

Carsten Agerskov (https://github.com/CarstenAgerskov)