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Indie Hacker Spotlight - New Interactive SMS Applications

By Nick Rogers in Code —

I have been creating interactive text message applications since 2015. The first one that I made was a magic eight ball. Text any question and it would reply with one of twenty answers that exactly mirrored the classic children's toy. I made it in a weekend and at the time it felt like magic to me. I love the medium.

There is something magical about sending a text and having a computer respond to me. It’s immediate. It’s satisfying- I think that’s why so many indie hackers are drawn to it. It fulfills the basic desire to build something that does a thing and see it work.

Shortly after that proof of concept, I designed a service that you could text and get back the current market prices for Magic: The Gathering cards. I shared it on reddit and it got exceptionally popular especially in one particular small town in Alaska. It had rigid usage rules but at the time it was much more efficient than using a web browser.

Locations of users of my first SMS application - mtgsms

I did a presentation for DemoCamp at the Hamilton City Library on the topic:

DemoCamp: Working with Twilio - Programming Interactive SMS Hamilton, Ontario - Nick Rogers, Sept 2015

Over the subsequent years, I have watched the space as SMS-based applications grew more impressive. With recent developments in large language models, a new breed of interactive text message apps have risen in the indie hacker scene. I found these mostly on reddit and hacker news posts and they range from very well developed / engineered to what appear to be weekend / hackathon proof of concepts. Here's a look into what is available now.

TextGPT.net

This one is created by a husband and wife team. It has stable diffusion and dall-e image generation. They sell access via tokens. You can buy a batch of tokens with a small entry point of $6. It's pretty clearly marketed as a direct link between ChatGPT and text messages.

Olly.Bot

An early YC post describes the architecture ("SERP-powered answers, supports voice with Whisper, and image inputs via Llava4, and it has text reminders scheduled via BullMQ"). You can message a few times free and requires a subscription for more. They appear to be promoting with affiliate partners. Capabilities include threaded chat, image generation with a single model, document upload and analysis and recently looks to be trying out white label options for "building your own bot".

Meetpal.ai

Went a little bit viral when he posted on reddit that he had "booked an uber with AI". It's spammy, but it's free, and the website has some interesting ideas about user submitted integrations. No image generation or scheduling, but I like the focus that this project has on tools and integrations. The positioning seems to be "AI that can actually do stuff".

Secretary.my

This option operates exclusively via iMessage so not strictly SMS but I love the onboarding. The website (in it's current form) walks you through some questions that guide what sort of assistant you want, and then autofills an initial message to start things off well. There's some details on this reddit post and it prides itself on privacy by "deleting your messages" after each interaction. In my experience it tends to forget things as a result, but this one has big potential as a useful assistant. No image generation as this one is fully text focused.

Honorable Mentions

Actor.do - Designed by reddit user r/alexrada, this assistant has memory and an interesting notes feature. It's waitlist only right now, but fun to see it develop. This also seems to be more proof of concept phase, but the website implies that they expect to grow. I tried out the notes, and this one feels like it has good tool use baked in, and I can't wait to see what develops here.

GPTsms.ai - the sketchiest of the offerings in this list, this one does have phone numbers from several different countries (UK in particular is interesting) you can see the first reddit post and the "meme integration" is terrible but funny. It's free for twenty messages and then the bot itself will send you a purchase link to get more access.

My New Project - TextMarv.com

I am dipping a toe back into interactive SMS, and my recent project (https://www.textmarv.com) feels like a return to my roots. Just like my first experiments, I designed it to be something that I would love to use myself. I built all of the features that I have seen across the other versions above and even added some more.

Scheduling Messages is a Game Changer

If you have used ChatGPT for anything recently, you'll know that it feels great when you are using it, but it isn't working for you when you don't have it open. Marv is always on, and you can make things happen automatically. Have him look up the weather and send you a text each morning, schedule a summary of a topic you are interested in, automate reminders that are natural and aware of your preferences. Push notifications feel like noise to me, but a text is something I will read.

It has built in web searching for quick research, image generation using the best models currently available (Flux) and scheduled messages for later. I use this for scheduling reminders and as a personal accountability partner.

Leveraging large language models means that Marv is conversational in a way I could only have dreamed of back in 2015. He parses what you send, decides what tools are appropriate and delivers all of the interactivity I would have loved to add back in the those early days.

Fantastic Image Generation

The image generation is great - I use it to quickly create a new phone wallpaper a couple times a week (I especially love scheduling these generations to get a nice surprise on Monday mornings). Marv also has image recognition built in, so if you send an image with a question, he will analyze the contents and answer.

How Can Marv Help You

If you are like me, you have a lot of things to remember. Marv makes it as easy as asking for a reminder. He is pinned to the top of my contact list and I use him for all sorts of things. I use the scheduled reminders to send me a message before each week starts that prompts me to plan ahead. I set goals and tell Marv about them and it keeps them front of mind for me. I may be biased, but I think Marv is the best option in this list. His image generations are top of class, His memory outlasts the traditional context windows of threaded conversations, and I love having someone else do web research for me.

Features - TextMarv.com

  • Blast past knowledge cutoffs from traditional AI - Have Marv perform independent web search / summary
  • Low Effort, High Reward - You are already on your phone. No need to open a browser or an app, just send a text or image to Marv.
  • Schedule Messages - Leverage the Marv’s abilities in a scheduled, asynchronous way. Marv is the best secretary I could hope for.
  • Simplified Image Generation Workflow - Just text your vision and get MMS responses. Marv constructs amazing prompts behind the scenes.
  • Works Anywhere - Even in low data environments, a text message will still succeed.