AICHE +Hey Email Integration

The short answer: open HEY in your browser or desktop app, click into the reply or compose field, press ⌃+⌥+R (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+R (Windows/Linux), speak for 30-60 seconds, and AICHE inserts the formatted message at your cursor.

HEY rethinks email from the ground up. The Imbox, The Feed, Paper Trail. The Screener for new contacts. Reply Later for messages that need thought. Set Aside for emails you want to keep visible. It is an opinionated system that rewards deliberate engagement over inbox-zero speed runs. But deliberate engagement means longer, more thoughtful replies, and typing those takes real time.

1. Open HEY in your browser at app.hey.com or in the desktop app.
2. Open an email in the Imbox and click Reply, or click New to compose a fresh message.
3. Click into the compose field so your cursor is positioned for text entry.
4. Press ⌃+⌥+R (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+R (Windows/Linux) to start recording.
5. Speak your full response. Take your time. HEY encourages thoughtful replies, and AICHE handles long-form speech well.
6. Press the hotkey again. AICHE transcribes and inserts the formatted text.
7. Review, edit if needed, then click Send.

Heads-up: HEY's compose window is minimal by design. There is no formatting toolbar cluttering the interface. AICHE inserts clean text that fits HEY's plain, focused aesthetic. If you want to add emphasis, use HEY's Markdown-style formatting after dictation.

Screening New Contacts with Voice

HEY's Screener is one of its most distinctive features. When someone emails you for the first time, they land in the Screener instead of your Imbox. You decide whether to let them in, and you can add a note about why you screened them in or out.

Most people click Yes or No quickly without adding notes, because typing a screening note feels like unnecessary effort. But those notes are useful later when you are trying to remember why you allowed a particular sender through. With AICHE, you can dictate a quick screening note in 5-10 seconds. "Vendor for the office renovation project, approved because we need quotes by Friday." That context is worth having three months later when they email again and you cannot remember who they are.

This works for batch screening too. If you have 15 new senders waiting in the Screener, you can work through them quickly. Open each one, make your decision, dictate a note if relevant, move on. The voice input removes the friction that makes people skip the note-taking step.

Processing the Reply Later Queue

Reply Later is where HEY puts emails you have flagged for a thoughtful response. The problem is that these messages pile up because the "later" never comes. You flagged them specifically because they needed more than a quick reply, which means typing the response feels like a significant time commitment.

Dictation changes the calculation. A 200-word thoughtful reply takes 8-10 minutes to type but 60-90 seconds to speak. Open your Reply Later queue, work through each message, and dictate your responses one after another. The quality stays high because you are speaking your actual thoughts rather than struggling with phrasing at the keyboard. Enable Message Ready so your casual speech arrives as clean, well-structured prose.

This is also where Content Organization helps. If your Reply Later response covers multiple topics, say "the budget discussion, the timeline concern, and the staffing question," Content Organization structures your spoken thoughts into distinct paragraphs addressing each point.

Long-Form Correspondence in the Imbox

HEY's Imbox is reserved for email that matters. These are conversations with people you have intentionally allowed through the Screener. The implied social contract is that Imbox emails deserve real responses, not one-line acknowledgments.

Speaking a thoughtful, detailed reply is faster than typing one, and the result often reads more naturally. When you type, you tend to edit as you go, second-guessing word choices and restructuring sentences mid-thought. When you speak, the ideas flow in the order you actually think about them, which often produces a more coherent and genuine response.

The pro-tip: use AICHE's Message Ready for Imbox replies and disable it for emails in The Feed. Imbox replies deserve polished formatting. Feed responses (newsletters, notifications) can stay casual if you reply to them at all.

Result: responding to 15 HEY threads with meaningful replies that takes 2 hours of typing becomes 35 minutes of dictation, and your Reply Later queue actually gets cleared instead of growing indefinitely.

Do this now: open your HEY Reply Later queue, pick the oldest message, press your hotkey, and speak the response you have been putting off. It will take less than two minutes.