Tex
Text your DA over iMessage: the same assistant, memory and tools as the terminal, in your pocket.
Tex is how you talk to your DA by text. You send an iMessage to your DA’s own number from your iPhone, and the real DA answers: the same identity, skills, memory and tools you work with in the terminal, under the same permission rules. It is not a chatbot with a copy of your notes. It is a second door into the same system.
Why it exists
The terminal is where most of the work happens, and you are not always at the terminal. A question comes up on a walk, a deploy needs your yes while you are out, or you remember something at dinner that should become a reminder. Without a way in from your phone, all of that waits until you sit back down, or it gets lost.
Most “text your AI” setups answer with a separate, reduced assistant that knows nothing about your work. Tex goes the other way. A text runs the real DA, so what you can ask for over iMessage is what you can ask for at the keyboard: read your mail, check the calendar, research something, write a file, run a skill, start a piece of work.
How it works
Your phone texts a Linq iMessage number. Linq delivers the text to a small Worker on your own Cloudflare account, which checks Linq’s signature and holds the text until your Mac picks it up, so nothing is lost while the Mac is asleep or offline. On the Mac, a background program called Relay decides who may drive the DA, starts a guarded session for the text, and sends the answer back as a short reply.
The line behaves the way a good assistant would on a phone:
- Seen and progress. Every text gets a 👀 the moment it lands, a long task sends a short line about what it is doing, and “stop” stops it.
- Tapbacks. A 👍 on the DA’s newest question is a yes to that one action, and a 👎 is a no. A plain “thanks” gets a ❤️ back instead of another text.
- Voice and photos. Voice notes are transcribed on your Mac and answered, with a spoken reply when you ask for one, and photos and files are looked at like anything else you hand it.
- Memory. The DA remembers your whole thread, months of it, and can open any old message down to your exact words.
- It texts first. When something needs you now (a failure, a deploy waiting on your yes, a reply you were waiting for), the DA texts you. It does this rarely.
Getting a line
The iMessage number comes from Linq, a hosted iMessage API. Linq’s free Hobby plan is the place to start: a free line, permanently, for personal use with up to 20 contacts. The number is shared: several Linq customers send from it, and Linq routes each reply to the account it belongs to, so your texts reach only your DA. Linq’s paid Pro plan gives a number that is only yours. Phone calls to your DA are an optional extra that needs a Twilio number; texting never does.
Setup is six steps, from linq signup to your first reply, in the Relay setup guide. The LifeOS installer offers it once the core install is done.
Who can reach it
Only your own number, over iMessage, drives the DA. A text from anyone else is dropped before any model runs. People you trust can be allowed to chat with it, but they talk to a separate assistant with no tools and no access to your data, and nothing they write grants anything. The DA asks in the thread before deleting, deploying, spending, publishing or messaging anyone, and the text line cannot be used to change its own allowlist or switch off its own guard.
Where it fits
Tex is not Voice, which speaks to you at your desk; Tex is how you reach the system when you are away from it. It is the delivery path for Vigil: when Vigil decides something is worth interrupting you, the text arrives here. And it reads and writes the same Cortex memory as every terminal session, so what you said over text is remembered there too.
What it feels like
You stop saving things for later. You text the thought while you have it, and the work starts. When the system needs you, your phone buzzes once with something that actually matters, and a thumbs-up handles it.