Python app to pick an item from your Pocket account and e-mail it to you to force you to read it
Pocket (formerly Read It Later) and similar bookmarking apps are great, but in my and many users' experience they tend to become a dumping ground for stuff that you mean to return to, but rarely if ever return do, maybe sometimes taking a few hours to curate the backlog in a herculean effort.
So I came up with this Python app that will, e.g. on a cron job, grab a bookmark at random and e-mail it to you (at present, the only outgoing e-mail provider supported is gmail. You could create an account just for this). It also erases the bookmark from Pocket, so you've got no choice but to read it!
Usage:
- Clone the repo
- Pip install -r requirements.txt\
- Register a Pocket app under your account to get a consumer key
- Get an access token by... ?
- Fill out the information in
.env-sampleand name it.env: pocket consumer key, pocket access token, gmail username, gmail password. Since this info is in a .env file in the same folder as the app, it will be as secure as that folder. - Set a cron job or manually trigger ./python pickpocket.py
Future todos:
- accommodate more general smtp than/as well as gmail\
- use yagmail's more secure option other than password
- allow option of ~/.yagmail config instead of .env
- assuming you have a custom e-mail, have a config option that lets you reply to the email to put the link back as a favorite.. At least that way some triage will happen
- make a webhook to trigger it (although that's really outside scope, a separate implementation concern)