Medulla — companion agent

The part of your brain that was supposed to catch everything.

Medulla lives in Telegram and does the catching for you — triaging your inbox, building your calendar out of fragments, and turning real email into real tasks in Sarabellum. It proposes; you tap; it shows you the receipt. No shame, no surprises, no cleanup you didn’t approve.

Status, honestly: founder beta. Medulla currently runs for one person — wired to real email, real calendars, real tasks — and every capability on this page is battle-tested on an actual AuDHD life before it reaches anyone else. The newsletter is the waitlist, and honesty is the roadmap.

The problem

The to-do list was never the hard part.

You capture the task. You even organize it. And then the inputs keep coming — forty emails a day deciding they’re your job now, a calendar that only reflects the plans you had the energy to type in, a task list that has no idea what your inbox already knows.

Every productivity app manages what you already caught. Nothing manages the catching. That gap — between what lands on you and what you have the executive function to process — is where the whole system quietly falls apart. Medulla stands in that gap.

Medullaonline
Medulla: Morning. 41 new emails overnight. Two actually need you; the rest I can clear — 6 promos, 3 receipts, 1 newsletter. Want me to file them?
Medulla proposes, awaiting your tap:

File 10 emails

→ 6 promos → Promotions

→ 3 receipts → Receipts

→ 1 newsletter → Read later

File them Not now
Receipt: ⚙ filed 10 · archived 0 · nothing deleted
Medulla: Done. The two that need you: Dr. Patel’s office (wants to reschedule) and your landlord (lease renewal). Want either as a task?
An illustration of a real Medulla exchange, not a screenshot.

Why a messenger

It reaches you where you already are.

Medulla lives in Telegram — not another app to remember to open, not another tab, not another login. It’s a thread you already glance at. When it needs a decision, it’s a message. When you need to capture something, it’s a message back. The whole relationship fits in the app your thumb already opens fifty times a day.

Three jobs, one agent

Inbox. Calendar. Tasks. The three inputs that bury you.

📧

It triages your inbox

Promos filed, receipts tucked away, the two things that actually need a human surfaced to the top. Medulla reads the noise so you only spend attention on signal.

It learns your rules by asking, once — “file these always, or case-by-case?” — and applies your answer forever, so it gets quieter over time instead of louder.

Filing is a proposal with a tap, never a silent sweep. And nothing is ever deleted — filing is reversible, archives restore, there is no delete key to press.

📅

It builds your day

Tell it your night in fragments — “zzz by 1, up at 7, office by 9, gym after” — and it lays out the contiguous, checklist-titled blocks your routine actually needs, back to back, nothing left floating.

It schedules around what it can’t see: a 🔒 in any calendar title makes that block invisible to Medulla, and it plans around the gap without ever knowing what’s in it.

Every calendar write is a card you approve first — because your calendar is not a place for surprises.

Medullaonline
You: zzz by 1, up at 7, office by 9, gym after work
Medulla: Got it. Here’s tonight into tomorrow — contiguous, nothing floating:
Medulla proposes, awaiting your tap:

Add 5 blocks to Google Calendar

🌙 Wind-down · 12:15–1:00a

😴 Sleep · 1:00–7:00a

🚿 Morning routine · 7:00–8:15a

🏢 Office · by 9:00a

🏋️ Gym · 5:30–6:30p

Add to calendar Edit first
Receipt: ⚙ created 5 events · skipped 1 🔒 private block
An illustration of a real Medulla exchange. Times and titles are examples.

It feeds your tasks

Actionable email becomes a captured task in your Sarabellum review queue — phrased as a real action, not a copy of the subject line. Your Top 5 and your inbox finally know about each other.

This is the one thing it does without asking for a tap — because your review queue is yours and every capture is reversible (change it, re-bucket it, archive it, all in a word). It captures directly and leaves a receipt; the approve-first cards are reserved for anything that leaves your control.

And it captures the way the app does, in full: the right bucket (Right Now, Today, This Week, Backlog…), a 🌶️ heat level, a label, a due date and time, dated notes, and STEPS — the sub-steps the app breaks a task into. New tasks land at the bottom of their bucket, never slotted in randomly.

Same conservatism as the app: it prefers to move or complete a task over archiving it, and it never bulk-cleans a board on its own.

Medullaonline
Medulla: That note from Sam is actually a to-do — captured it as a real action. It’s in your review queue, where you can change or archive it anytime; nothing else touched.
Medulla did this:

Captured → Sarabellum

Send Sam the Q3 numbers

Bucket: This Week · 🌶️🌶️ · Label: Work · Due Fri

STEPS: pull report → sanity-check → email

Receipt: ⚙ created task · bucket this_week · 3 steps · appended to bottom
You: perfect — drop the heat to one though
Receipt: ⚙ updated task · heat 2 → 1
An illustration of a real Medulla exchange, not a screenshot.

The trust architecture

It proposes. You tap. That’s the whole deal.

Anything that leaves your control or touches the outside world — filing an email, writing to your calendar — arrives as a card in your Telegram thread with the details spelled out and two buttons. Your tap executes it — the agent’s own words never can. That isn’t a policy you’re asked to trust; it’s enforced structurally: the dangerous verbs either don’t exist in the code or fire only against a one-time token your tap creates.

The one exception is capturing a task into your own Sarabellum queue — safe by default and fully reversible, so it just happens, with a receipt, and you adjust it after. The tap is spent where it matters, not on friction for its own sake.

Watch mode first. New connections start read-only — Medulla shows you what it would have done until you’ve seen enough to trust it.

Nothing is ever deleted. Filing is reversible, archives restore, and there is no delete key to press.

Private stays private. A 🔒 in any calendar title makes that block invisible to the agent — it schedules around what it cannot see.

Your data lives in your accounts. Google, your task system, your messenger. Medulla holds summaries with expiration dates, not archives.

The receipts

An agent that has to show its working.

The failure mode of every AI assistant is the confident lie — “Done! I’ve filed those for you” when it filed nothing. So Medulla can’t just claim things.

Every tool it runs leaves a receipt (⚙) in the thread, generated from the tool’s actual result — not narrated by the model, so it can’t be faked. And when an action fails, it says so plainly (⚙ ✗) instead of dressing it up as success. You never have to take its word for anything, which is the only way an external brain earns being trusted with your inbox.

Medullaonline
You: can you move the dentist thing to next week and remind me Monday?
Receipt: ⚙ moved task → next_week
Failed action: ⚙ ✗ reminder not set — Telegram rate limit, nothing saved. Retry?
Medulla: Moved it. The reminder didn’t take — I hit a rate limit and I’d rather tell you than pretend. Want me to try again?
An illustration of Medulla’s receipts, including an honest failure.
Medullaonline
Receipt: ⚙ reminder due · repeat every 30m until done
Medulla: Take meds. I’ll keep nudging until you tell me it’s handled — no streak, no guilt, just until it’s done.
You: done
Receipt: ⚙ reminder marked done · repeat stopped · archived
Medulla: Nice. That one’s closed — I’ll stop nagging.
An illustration of a real Medulla exchange, not a screenshot.

Reminders that actually work on you

It nags until it’s done — then stops.

A reminder that fires once and vanishes is a reminder you’ll miss. Medulla’s reminders repeat until you mark them handled — every 30 minutes, an hour, whatever cadence fits — and the moment you say “done,” the nagging stops and the reminder archives itself.

It’s the difference between a notification and accountability. No streak to protect, no badge to lose — just a gentle, persistent tap on the shoulder that gives up the second the thing is actually off your plate.

Same brain, shared state

Medulla and the app are one system.

Start a focus session in Telegram and it appears live on your Sarabellum dashboard’s Right Now card; start one in the app and Telegram knows. One timer, two surfaces, always in sync — because a companion that doesn’t know what the app is doing is just a second thing to reconcile.

And it inherits Sarabellum’s whole constitution: one thing at a time, today is small, shape first, reset without shame. Medulla’s messages follow the same rules the app does — because a second assistant that floods you is just a second problem.

Questions people actually ask

The fair objections, answered.

Can it send email or delete things on my behalf?

No silent sends and no deletes, ever. Anything outbound — email, calendar writes — is an approve-first card; filing is reversible and there is no delete key in the code for it to press. The one thing it does directly is capture a task into your own Sarabellum queue, which is reversible and receipted. The destructive verbs either don’t exist or only fire against a one-time token your tap creates.

What does it actually store?

Summaries with expiration dates, not archives. Your real data stays in your own accounts — Google, your task system, your messenger. Medulla is the agent in the middle, not a new place your life gets copied to.

How do I know it did what it says it did?

Every tool call leaves a receipt (⚙) built from the tool’s real result, and failures show as ⚙ ✗ rather than being hidden. You can audit the whole thread — what it claimed and what it actually ran are the same line.

What if I don’t trust it with my inbox yet?

Watch mode. New connections start read-only: Medulla shows you what it would have done, and touches nothing, until you’ve seen enough to switch it on. Trust is earned in front of you, not assumed.

Do I need Sarabellum to use Medulla?

They’re built to be one system — Medulla captures into your Sarabellum queue and mirrors your focus timer both ways. It’s a companion to the app, not a standalone product.

Why Telegram?

Because it’s a thread you already open, not another app to install and forget. The whole relationship — proposals, taps, captures, receipts — fits in a chat your thumb already knows how to use.

Honest about the edges

What it isn’t — yet.

A page that only lists wins is a sales pitch. Here’s the truth about where Medulla is.

It’s a founder beta

Medulla runs for one person today, on a real AuDHD life. It’s built in public and proven on that life before it opens up. The newsletter is the waitlist.

It lives in Telegram

That’s the only front door right now. If you don’t use Telegram, this isn’t for you yet — other messengers may come, but nothing is promised it can’t deliver.

Email & Google, first

Inbox triage and calendar building are built around Google today. The trust architecture is the point; the number of connected services will grow behind it, carefully.

Get on the Medulla waitlist

No schedule, no drip sequence, no growth funnel. Just a note when something worth knowing ships.

An agent you approve, not one you clean up after.

Founder beta — the newsletter is the waitlist, and honesty is the roadmap.