Brief — Catch what matters.

How it works

Install the Mac app. Brief lives in your menu bar and does the scanning — iMessage only exists on your Mac.
Grant Full Disk Access. Apple requires it to read the Messages database. It's the one setup step; Brief walks you through it.
Review on your iPhone. Real tasks show up in the app — approve to Reminders/Calendar or dismiss. That's it.

Your messages stay on your Mac. Brief reads the local Messages database to find tasks. Full message histories are never uploaded.
What goes to the AI. To decide if a message is a task, the text of candidate messages is sent to your chosen AI provider (e.g. Anthropic) using your own key, from your Mac. You control the key; it's stored only in your Mac's Keychain.
What Brief's server stores. Only the reviewable result — a short title and at most a 200-character excerpt — synced so your phone can show the queue. Not your conversations.
Full Disk Access, honestly. It sounds broad, but it's simply Apple's only supported way for an app to read iMessage. Brief uses it to read Messages — nothing else.
No analytics, no cookies, no trackers — on this site or in the apps. Beta diagnostics record app behavior (errors, scan timing), never message content or who texted you.