I've been exploring how to integrate advanced AI agents into my daily workflow, and email remains the most universal interface for asynchronous tasks.
I built a "Deep Research" agent using Val Town that allows me to trigger complex research tasks simply by sending an email. It uses Google's Deep Research model to perform the heavy lifting.
It is pretty simple to get started, you just need to send an email.
- Send an email to:
deep-research@valtown.email - Subject: Your research topic (e.g., "Latest advances in quantum computing") - this is only used in the title of the reply
- Body: Detailed research question or context that will be sent to Deep Research
- Wait: The system will process your request and send the research report back to your email
The architecture is interesting because Deep Research can take a while to complete. I couldn't just hold the connection open. Instead, I set up a two-part system on Val Town:
- An Email Handler: Receives the query and kicks off the job with the Google GenAI API, saving the task ID to a JSON object in valtown blob storage.
- A Cron Job: Periodically checks the status of pending tasks. Once a report is ready, it formats the result as HTML and emails it back to the sender.
It's a great example of how serverless functions and simple state storage can build powerful asynchronous agents.
You can fork this project or view the source code directly on Val Town.
I lead the Chrome Developer Relations team at Google.
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