I built an AI to reply to my grandma's emails (and she has no idea)

Every day, like clockwork, an email lands in my inbox from Mamie — my French grandmother. It's always long, always warm, and always makes me feel like the worst grandson on the planet.

She tells me about her garden. The tomatoes are coming along nicely, but the slugs are relentless this year. The neighbour's dog got out again and dug up her dahlias. She tried a new recipe for tarte aux pommes — "not as good as the one from Tante Marie, but your grandfather would have liked it." She asks how I'm doing. Whether I'm eating enough. Whether it's cold where I am.

And me? I read every word. I smile. I think, "I'll reply tonight."

I don't reply tonight.

The guilt spiral

Days pass. Then a week. Then two. The longer I wait, the harder it becomes. What do I even say now? "Sorry I disappeared for 16 days, I was busy staring at a screen"? The guilt compounds like interest on a loan I never meant to take out.

I'm not a bad person. I'm just a bad emailer. I've shipped production code at 2 AM, debugged memory leaks on a Sunday, and once spent an entire weekend writing a script to sort my vinyl collection by BPM. But replying to my grandmother? Somehow that's the task that defeats me.

The thing is, it's not that I don't care. It's the opposite. I care so much that a quick "Thanks, love you!" feels inadequate. She wrote me four paragraphs about her week — she deserves four paragraphs back. But four paragraphs take time, and time is the one thing that always seems to slip away.

Meanwhile, Mamie doesn't complain. She never says, "You haven't written back." She just sends another email the next day, picking up right where she left off, as if my silence was perfectly fine. Which somehow makes it worse.

I picture her checking her inbox. Refreshing. Seeing nothing. Going back to her garden.

That image is what broke me.

The idea

I'm a developer. When I have a problem, I build something. It's a reflex, like how some people stress-bake. I stress-code.

So one evening, staring at yet another unanswered email from Mamie, I thought: what if I could build something that replies for me? Not a dumb auto-responder — "Thank you for your email, I will get back to you shortly" — but something that actually sounds like *me*?

Something that knows I call her "Mamie," not "Grandmother." That knows I'd ask about the garden. That would mention the thing I cooked last weekend or the trip I'm planning. Something that writes the way I write — a bit rambling, a bit funny, always ending with "Gros bisous."

At first it felt ridiculous. Then it felt like a side project. Then it felt like it might actually work.

I want to be clear about something, because I know what some of you are thinking: "This is kind of sad. Just reply to your grandma, dude." And you're right — in an ideal world, I would. Every single day. But I don't. That's the whole point.

The choice was never between Auto-Bisou and me writing back. The choice was between Auto-Bisou and *silence*. Weeks of it. And if you've ever been on the receiving end of that silence from someone you love, you know which one is worse.

Auto-Bisou isn't meant to replace me. It's meant to fill the gaps for people like me — people who care deeply but are genuinely, chronically terrible at replying. It's not "I don't want to write to you." It's "I want to write to you, and now something makes sure that actually happens."

Building Auto-Bisou

I called it Auto-Bisou. "Bisou" means "kiss" in French — the thing you write at the end of every email to someone you love. It felt right for something born out of guilt and affection in roughly equal measure.

The idea is simple: Auto-Bisou reads incoming emails from the people you care about, understands what they're saying, and drafts a reply in your voice. It knows your tone, your quirks, the little details of your life. You can tell it things like "I started a new job" or "the kids are doing swimming lessons," and it'll weave those updates into replies naturally — the way you would if you actually sat down and wrote.

You can review every draft before it sends, or let it handle things automatically. You set the pace. It's not trying to replace you — it's trying to be you on the days when you can't quite get to it yourself.

It handles the stuff that makes email replies feel like *you*: the right greeting, the right sign-off, asking about the things they mentioned last time. It even sends birthday wishes and holiday greetings so you never miss the moments that matter.

The moment of truth

The first time Auto-Bisou replied to one of Mamie's emails, I held my breath. I read the draft before it sent, and I'll be honest — it was weird seeing words I didn't write that sounded exactly like words I would write. It asked about the tomatoes. It mentioned the bread I baked that weekend. It ended with "Gros bisous, Tim."

Mamie replied within hours. She was delighted. She told me about a new variety of tomato she was trying. She said she was happy I was baking.

She has no idea.

Here's the thing — the *content* is real. Those are my life updates. That's my tone. It's what I would have said, if I'd gotten around to saying it. Auto-Bisou didn't fabricate a relationship — it just kept one going that I was accidentally letting slip through silence.

And I still write to her myself. The real, from-scratch, staring-at-a-blank-screen kind of email. But now there's no three-week gap of nothing before I do. The conversation keeps flowing, and when I do sit down to write, it feels like picking up a thread instead of reviving a dead one. Auto-Bisou didn't make me lazier — it took away the paralysing guilt that made replying feel impossible.

Why this matters

We live in a strange time. We have more ways to communicate than ever, and yet staying in touch with the people we love feels harder than it should. Not because we don't care — because we're overwhelmed. Inbox zero is a myth. Every notification is a tiny demand. And the emails that matter most — the ones from the people who love us unconditionally — are ironically the easiest to postpone, because we know they'll still love us even if we don't reply.

But they shouldn't have to.

I built Auto-Bisou for my grandma, but it turns out a lot of people have a Mamie in their life. A parent who emails every Sunday. An aunt who sends updates about the cousins. A family friend who never forgot your birthday. People who deserve a reply — not because they demand one, but because they'd light up if they got one.

For all of them, the alternative was never "a heartfelt handwritten email vs. an AI reply." It was "an AI reply vs. nothing." And nothing is what they were getting.

Technology gets a bad rap for making us less human. And a lot of the time, that's fair. But sometimes, if you build it with enough care, it can help people who struggle to stay in touch actually stay in touch — not as a replacement for the real thing, but as a safety net for when life gets in the way.

Even if it's just a bisou.