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Never Miss an Event: Real-Time Reminders Are Here

· 3 min read

Two updates shipped today that fix one of the most common things people asked about: getting reminded before events actually happen.

Real-time event reminders via Telegram​

Until now, TextConcierge could create calendar events and send daily summaries -- but it wouldn't ping you right before something was about to start. If you added "Golf at 6am tomorrow," you'd see it in your morning summary, but you wouldn't get a heads-up 15 minutes before tee time.

That's fixed. TextConcierge now sends a Telegram notification before each event starts:

⏰ Golf -- in 15 min (6:00am) 📍 Pine Hills Golf Club

What you should know:

  • On by default. Every family gets reminders automatically -- no setup needed.
  • Configurable timing. The default is 15 minutes before, but you can set it anywhere from 0 to 60 minutes. Setting it to 0 gives you a "starting now" ping.
  • Works with all your events. Both events you create through TextConcierge and events synced from Google Calendar get reminders.
  • No duplicates. Each event only triggers one reminder, even if the system checks multiple times before it starts.
  • Respects your timezone. Times in the reminder reflect your local timezone, not UTC.
  • Skips all-day events. You won't get a reminder for birthdays or holidays that span the whole day.
  • Skips cancelled events. If a synced Google Calendar event was cancelled, no reminder is sent.

If you'd rather not get event reminders, you can turn them off -- just ask the bot.

"Remind me" now does the right thing​

This one was a bug that's been bugging us. If you texted "remind me about golf tomorrow at 6am," TextConcierge would save it as a note and reply "Note saved!" -- which completely missed the point. You wanted a calendar event with a time, not a text note.

The fix: any "remind me" message that includes a date or time now creates a calendar event. Only timeless reminders like "remind me that the wifi password is abc123" get saved as notes.

The rule is simple:

  • "Remind me about X at [time]" or "on [date]" → calendar event
  • "Remind me that X" (no time) → note

This means "remind me" requests now benefit from the new real-time reminders above. Say "remind me about golf tomorrow at 6am" and you'll get a Telegram ping at 5:45am.

Try it now​

Open your TextConcierge chat and type something like:

  • "Remind me to take medicine at 2pm"
  • "Add dentist appointment Thursday at 3pm"

You'll get a reminder notification before it starts. That's it -- no settings to configure, no app to install. Just text it and it works.