I Built a Google Chat Bot That Understands 14 Commands. Runs on Vercel for Pennies.

Why Google Chat?

Because it's open all day. Email, Slack, Notion, Todoist — more apps to switch between. But Chat is just a tab in Gmail. It's always there.

So I thought: what if I had one bot I could write to in natural language and it just handles things? No switching between 5 apps.

How It Works

I write a message in Google Chat. The message hits a Vercel serverless function as a webhook. It sends it to OpenAI GPT-4.1-mini, which classifies the intent and extracts parameters. Then it executes.

14 intents the bot handles:

Intent	What it does	Example

create_issue	Creates GitHub issue	"create task: fix login"
query_status	Searches issues	"what are my open tasks?"
calendar_query	Today's calendar	"what do I have today?"
calendar_create	New event	"schedule meeting with Jake tomorrow at 10"
tasks_query	Open tasks	"show my tasks"
tasks_complete	Complete task	"done: grocery shopping"
contacts_search	Search contacts	"find contact Smith"
contacts_create	New contact	"save contact: Peter, peter@company.com"
drive_search	Search Drive	"find the AI presentation"
braindump	Capture thought	"braindump: idea for new product..."
url_dump	Save link	"save URL: https://coolsite.com"
weekly_checkin	Weekly reflection	"weekly checkin: this week I..."
checklist_done	Check off item	"done: morning workout"
general	Help	"what can you do?"

AI Classification — How It Knows What I Want

The whole trick is one OpenAI call. The system prompt defines all 14 intents and GPT-4.1-mini returns structured JSON:

• intent — which of the 14
• title — task/event name
• priority — p1/p2/p3
• labels — relevant tags

GPT-4.1-mini is perfect for this — fast, cheap, and classification accuracy is over 95%. No fine-tuning needed, just a solid system prompt.

Stack

Layer	Technology

Webhook	Vercel serverless (TypeScript)
AI classification	OpenAI GPT-4.1-mini
Tasks	GitHub Issues API
Calendar	Google Calendar API
Tasks	Google Tasks API
Files	Google Drive API
Contacts	Google People API
Notifications	n8n webhooks

Everything runs on Vercel free/hobby tier. Google APIs use OAuth with refresh token. GitHub uses a personal access token.

What Surprised Me

1. Google Workspace Add-on format is weird. The response must be in DataActions format with an XML wrapper. Not JSON, not plain text. Spent half a day getting it to work. 2. Intent classification needs examples. Without few-shot examples in the system prompt, GPT confused "calendar_query" and "tasks_query". Adding 2-3 examples per intent fixed it. 3. Braindump is the killer feature. It was supposed to be a minor intent, but I use it the most. I type a thought into Chat, it saves as a GitHub Issue with "braindump" label. Once a week I sort through them.

What It Costs

Service	Monthly cost

Vercel	$0 (hobby tier)
OpenAI (classification)	~$1-2
GitHub	$0
Google APIs	$0
Total	~$1-2/month

For $2/month I have a personal assistant that's always online and never forgets.

If someone told me a year ago I'd build my own AI assistant for the price of a coffee, I wouldn't have believed them. But here we are.