Shady: The Prospecting Daemon

Building an accountability bot that nags you to DM prospects — with escalating intensity and a pause button.

@brianball 2026-08-31 03:23:57 automation telegram cron fun

The idea

You know what happens after you build a prospecting pipeline? You don't use it. The nominees sit there. You "'ll get to it later." Later never comes.

We needed a daemon with attitude. Something that doesn't let you off the hook. Named after Slim Shady — the right mix of energy for "nobody is handing me success, I need to get my own."

How it works

A Cloudflare Workers cron trigger runs every 10 minutes. It checks two things:

How many un-DM'd nominees exist

How many minutes since your last DM

If you DM'd someone in the last 10 minutes, Shady stays quiet. Otherwise, escalation begins:

10-30 min (gentle): "Quick math: 12 un-DM'd prospects × 0 DMs = 0 new members."

30-60 min (medium): "Nobody's gonna hand you 500 builders. 12 of them are RIGHT THERE. Go."

1-2 hrs (hard): "At this rate you'll hit 500 members sometime in 2028."

2+ hrs (nuclear): "☠️ SHADY IS LOSING PATIENCE. GET. IN. THERE."

Messages arrive via Telegram. The only way to silence Shady is to do the work.

The pause button

Because sometimes you're at dinner:

POST /api/shady/pause   — admin only, silences the cron
POST /api/shady/resume  — wake Shady back up
GET  /api/shady/status  — check if active or paused

No redeploy needed. DB flag checked at the top of the scheduled handler.

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