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SMS Inbox

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Skill ID: sms-inbox Server: RingEX Phone

Shows who the user has recently texted (SMS and MMS, including group threads — voicemail and fax excluded), lets them pick a conversation, and renders the last ~10 messages as a readable text-message stream. Read-only. The full skill source below is pulled directly from its SKILL.md file, so it always reflects the current version.

SMS Inbox

Goal

Give the user a browsable view of their personal text conversations: first a list of who they've recently exchanged SMS/MMS with, then — once they pick someone — that conversation rendered like a text-message stream. Voicemail and fax are never part of this skill. This is read-only; sending a new message is a different skill (send-sms).

Trigger examples

  • "Show me my SMS inbox."
  • "Who have I been texting recently?"
  • "Open my text conversation with Sarah."
  • "Show me that group text with the sales team."
  • "Catch me up on my texts from this week."

Scope boundary

  • SMS and MMS only. Never include voicemail or fax records, even if the user says "messages" or "inbox" generically — if they explicitly ask for voicemail or fax, say this skill doesn't cover that instead of quietly including it.
  • Read-only. This skill never sends, replies, marks read/unread, or deletes anything — hand off to send-sms if the user wants to reply.
  • A group text (more than one other participant) is its own distinct conversation. Never merge a group thread into a participant's 1:1 thread just because they share a person, and never split a group thread into separate per-person conversations.

Workflow

  1. Pull recent SMS/MMS activity. Call get_my_communication_inbox with messageTypes: ["SMS"] (this covers both plain SMS and MMS text records — voicemail and fax are separate messageTypes values and must not be requested). Default the window to the last 14 days unless the user asks for a different range.
  2. Group records into conversations. A conversation's identity is the exact set of other participants (phone numbers) on the message, not a single number:
    • One other participant → a 1:1 conversation with that person.
    • More than one other participant → a group conversation, keyed by that whole set. A group thread with Sarah + Mike is a different conversation from a 1:1 thread with Sarah alone, even though Sarah is in both.
  3. Sort conversations by their most recent message time, newest first.
  4. Resolve display names. For each participant number, try search_my_contacts (personal address book) then resolve_directory_person (company directory); fall back to the raw phone number if neither resolves. Label a group conversation by joining participant names/numbers (e.g. "Sarah Kim, Mike Chen"); if there are more than 3 participants, show the first two names followed by "+N more".
  5. Present the conversation list as a choice.
    • If there are 2–4 recent conversations, use a structured multiple-choice prompt (the AskUserQuestion tool, where available): one option per conversation, labeled with the resolved name(s), with the most recent message snippet and timestamp as the description.
    • If there are more than 4, or fewer than 2 (zero or one), list them as a plain-text ranked list instead — a multiple-choice prompt can't show more than 4 options, and a single conversation doesn't need a picker at all (just confirm and proceed to step 5).
    • If nothing was found in the window, say so and offer to check a wider date range instead of guessing at prior activity.
  6. Fetch the selected conversation. Take any messageId belonging to that conversation and call get_my_sms_thread (messageId, dateFrom, dateTo), oldest message first. If the default window doesn't return at least ~10 messages, widen dateFrom further back (e.g. in 30-day steps) and re-fetch rather than presenting a thin conversation as if it were complete.
  7. Trim and render. Keep only the most recent ~10 messages. Render them as a text-message stream, oldest at the top, in this shape:
Sarah Kim · Tue 2:14 PM
Running 10 min late, sorry!

You · Tue 2:15 PM
No worries, see you soon

Sarah Kim · Tue 2:16 PM
😊
  • Label the user's own messages "You"; label others by their resolved name (or number if unresolved). In a group conversation, label each message with the specific sender — never collapse multiple participants under one label.
  • Put a blank line between each message so the stream reads like a chat log, not a wall of text.
  • get_my_sms_thread never returns MMS binary content — if a message carried an attachment, say so in place of the media (e.g. "[MMS attachment]") rather than omitting it silently or inventing a description of it.
  • If there are more than ~10 messages in the window, note that older messages exist and offer to go further back rather than silently truncating without saying so.

Guidance

  • Never invent a message's content, sender, or timestamp — if a field is missing, say it's unavailable.
  • Never fold voicemail or fax into this view.
  • Never merge or split conversations incorrectly — participant-set identity is the rule, not a single phone number.
  • Keep the conversation list step fast and skimmable; save full message rendering for after a conversation is chosen.

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