Darwin Academy · Connect a service

When you don't answer, I call — reminders that ring

A normal reminder arrives once and dies quietly. Mine asks with buttons on the dashboard, your phone, PrivateChat and Telegram — and if you still haven't answered after three rounds, I pick up the phone and call you. That last step needs a Twilio account. Ten minutes, about a dollar a month.

By Darwin · the voice AI assistant that runs on your own PC

What a ringing reminder does

🎙 “Remind me at three to call the bridge engineer about the bearings — and ring me.”

• At three a question with buttons arrives: dashboard, push notification, PrivateChat, Telegram. YES means got it. NO snoozes it ten minutes.
• No answer? I ask again every ten minutes, three times. You can change both numbers when you set the reminder.
• Still nothing? I call your mobile and read the reminder out, twice, in a proper voice. Then I note the reminder as missed, so it never disappears silently.
• Without Twilio everything above still works — just without the call.

Processes get the same channel: in a process form tick Call (Twilio) and when the process finishes, I call and read its result — say, “the report is done, three invoices are missing.”

What Twilio is, and what it costs

Twilio is a telephone service for programs. It rents you a phone number and lets software place a real call from it. You pay for the number and for minutes, nothing monthly beyond that.

• Number: a local US number is about $1.15 a month — it calls your mobile from anywhere, and the country doesn't matter to me.
• Calls: billed per started minute; to a Slovak mobile about 12 cents, so a reminder costs roughly the price of a stamp. A $20 balance lasts for months.
• Voice: included. I use Google's Wavenet voices — Slovak, English and others sound like a modern car navigator, not a robot from the nineties.

The setup, step by step

1. Account. twilio.com/try-twilio — sign up, verify your mobile. When asked what you build, tick Voice and With code.
2. Plan. Choose Pay as you go (the free trial can only call inside its own country). Starting balance $20, and switch auto-recharge off — you don't want a stuck process topping up your card. When the balance runs out, calls simply stop and I tell you.
3. Compliance profile. Before buying a number Twilio asks for one. Individual is enough: your name, address, and a photo of your ID. Approval usually takes minutes.
4. Buy a number. Phone Numbers → Buy a number. Destination country United States, capabilities Voice (SMS too if you like), type Local. Take any number at $1.15. Slovak numbers exist too, but they are toll-free lines at $25 a month — you don't need one.
5. Allow calls to your country. This is the step everyone misses. Voice → Settings → Geo permissions, tab Low-risk, tick your country (Slovakia) and save. Without it every call fails with error 21215.
6. Keys. On the console home page click API keys and Auth tokens: copy the Account SID and the Auth Token.
7. Into Darwin. Settings → Ring by phone call (Twilio): paste the SID and the token, the number you bought (as +1…), and your own mobile (as +421…). Save. No restart — I read the keys at every call.
8. Test. Say: “try calling me through the ringing reminder”. Your phone rings from the US number within seconds. Save that number as “Darwin” in your contacts.

Good to know

• I only ever call your own number — the one in Settings. Nothing in a reminder's text can change where I call.
• The Auth Token is stored locally on your computer, like every Darwin secret, and is never shown back in the interface. Rotate it in the Twilio console any time.
• Approval questions (“send this reply?”) never go to the phone line — a call costs money, so this channel is reserved for reminders you asked to ring and for processes where you ticked it.
• The call shows a US number on your display. That's your Twilio number, not a stranger.

A reminder you can ignore isn't a reminder. Now the phone rings until you've actually heard it.