Most assistants only speak when spoken to. Henchman’s crew can work on a schedule, so the useful stuff is waiting for you instead of the other way round.
Routines
A routine is a job on a timer. Some examples:
- a morning brief at 7:30 with the weather, today’s calendar and anything due
- a Friday check on the prices you’re watching
- every two hours, a look at your reminders for anything overdue
- once, next Tuesday at 9, a nudge to book the car in
You can set routines up yourself, or ask a henchman to make one. You approve a new routine before it starts, and it does a test run straight away so you can see what you’ll get. The result lands in your henchman’s conversation with the routine’s name on it.
Check-ins
You can also give a henchman a short checklist to look over every so often during the day, say every hour between 8am and 10pm. It stays quiet unless something on the list needs you. An empty checklist costs nothing.
Calendar and reminders
Routines pair well with your Mac’s Calendar and Reminders, and with Google Calendar if you connect it. A henchman can read what’s coming up, add events and create reminders. See email and calendar.
Working in the background
Switch on keeping your crew working when Henchman is closed and it starts at login and sits in the menu bar, showing who’s busy, what’s waiting for you and the next routines. There’s a switch to pause routines whenever you want quiet.
Honest limits
Your Mac needs to be awake, because that’s where the thinking happens. Henchman doesn’t wake a sleeping Mac. A routine that keeps failing is paused after ten tries in a row, and you’re told. A routine can’t ask you questions mid-run, but it can wait for your approval if it needs one.