Poke's documentation describes a messaging-first assistant available through Apple Messages, Telegram, WhatsApp, and RCS. It supports email, calendars, reminders, web search, and integrations, while its integration guide recommends Recipes as a starting point. The important word is “starting”: a recipe should make one useful workflow repeatable.
How to build a useful Poke recipe
| Recipe idea | Useful connection | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Daily work brief | Project tool and calendar | A message showing assigned work, deadlines, and conflicts. |
| Inbox follow-up | Email and reminders | Potential follow-ups prepared for the user to review. |
| Product watch | A maintained source feed | Current updates summarized with links to the original sources. |
| Technical question | Documentation or custom MCP connector | Relevant material retrieved without granting unrelated write access. |
“Every morning, summarize the Linear issues assigned to me and flag anything blocked” has a clear input and output. “Connect everything and help somehow” does not. The first is a recipe; the second is a junk drawer.
Example: turn a product update into a decision
- A source feed tells Poke that a product, competitor, or dependency changed.
- Poke sends the user a short summary with the source and date.
- The user asks for the relevant project or calendar context.
- Poke prepares a task or draft, but waits for approval before sending or changing anything.
The source feed stays read-focused. Poke turns the message into a workflow, while the user remains in control of the external action.
When to use a custom connector
Poke also documents custom MCP integrations for services that are not available as a Recipe. That flexibility is useful when a team has a specialized internal system, but it makes authentication and maintenance part of the design. Give a custom connector a narrow purpose, a known owner, and a plan for stale or unavailable data. An endpoint that supplies context is not automatically permission to write to every system in the workflow.
Where Synorb fits
Synorb can complement the recipe model with source-grounded context. Synorb is the company writing this recommendation, so its inclusion is disclosed. A Synorb Stream can define the sources or topics Poke should watch, and a Manifest can carry the original URL, date, stable ID, and structured summary. The Content Feeds for AI guide explains why maintained feeds are useful when an agent needs the same kind of current information repeatedly. Builders can explore Synorb's agent connection paths while Poke remains the message-native interface.
The best Poke setup is conversational on the surface but explicit underneath: a recipe or connector with a known scope, an inspectable source, and a clear approval point before external action.