Reminder skill cannot be summoned

Archive - Mycroft Project This category is being retired - Support
1

I’m not sure what’s happened, but I seem to be unable to set reminders. The skill never gets around to being called, if I’m interpreting the CLI correctly.

I tried summoning the skill directly via the CLI, in case the STT was mis-interpreting me. I typed “set a reminder for every saturday at 9am to get ready for ice skating”, and several variations thereof. I’m consistently getting “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.” or other variations of the “No can do” response. The CLI feedback looks like this:

14:37:19.020 | INFO     |   964 | QuestionsAnswersSkill | Searching for set a reminder for every saturday at 9am to get ready for ice skating
 14:37:19.071 | INFO     |   964 | WolframAlphaSkill | WolframAlpha query: set a reminder for every saturday at 9am to get ready for ice skating
 14:37:19.075 | INFO     |   964 | WolframAlphaSkill | Non-question, ignoring: set a reminder for every saturday at 9am to get ready for ice skating
 14:37:20.221 | INFO     |   964 | QuestionsAnswersSkill | Timeout occured check responses

skills.log shows the same text, with nothing else relevant above it. The mycroft-reminder skill is installed and is getting loaded successfully, as per skills.log

2022-02-12 14:18:45.826 | INFO     |   964 | mycroft.skills.settings:get_local_settings:83 | /home/pi/.config/mycroft/skills/mycroft-reminder.mycroftai/settings.json
2022-02-12 14:18:45.988 | INFO     |   964 | mycroft.skills.skill_loader:_communicate_load_status:344 | Skill mycroft-reminder.mycroftai loaded successfully
2022-02-12 14:31:05.901 | INFO     |   964 | msm.skill_entry | Nothing new for mycroft-reminder

Thoughts? I’m not sure where to even start, other than what I’ve already checked.

2

For me, it doesn’t work with “set a reminder”. Never. I have to say “Remind me to…”. Apparently it’s a big difference :slight_smile:

3

Hmm, I’ll have to try that when I get home. That nomenclature is mentioned in the skill documentation, which is why I tried it. And it has worked before with that so…I am confuse.

4

Some other skill might be taking the “set” part of the utterance, while starting with the word “remind” makes it go in a different order. I did some tests:

 set a reminder for 7:30                                                                                                   voice.log
 >> The test precise model has been enabled.
 remind me something at 7:30
 >> About what?
5

According to the intent file, the utterance should be:

(could you |)set a reminder(| for me| for us)

The intent you are looking for is:

add a reminder to {reminder} (at|on) {timedate}

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6 
set a reminder
 >> Sorry, I don't understand. 
 could you set a reminder
 >> I'm not sure I understood you.
 could you set a reminder for me
 >> You might have to say that a different way.
remind me to get ready for ice skating every saturday at 9 am
 >> I don't understand, but I'm learning new things everyday.
remind me every saturday at 9 am
I don't know what that means.
why do you hate me
 >> I'm not sure, but I'm doing my best to learn.

I really think the issue here is that it’s not “hitting” the reminder skill, but I’m not sure why that would be or how to fix it. I think the utterances are correct.

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7

Just a check back in to see if anyone might have a suggestion on some log files to check, or a setting to fiddle about with…

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Hey @sparkyvision - I was just looking at this as we got some improved wording in one of the other intent files.

“could you set a reminder for me” isn’t working as that intent file doesn’t seem to be registered to an intent. Looks like it was an intended feature that got missed maybe?

I’ve just added one so if you pull the latest changes from the 21.02 branch it should now respond.

The ice skating example works now too :slight_smile:

9

Thanks Gez! I really appreciate it. If I use update.sh, will it blow away stuff I haven’t “stashed”, or should I do that manually?

10

Sorry not sure what update.sh you’re referring to?

But yeah, if you have made local changes to a Skill I’d suggest stashing then popping:

git stash  # "stash" your changes - ie put them aside
git pull   # or make some other change eg switch branch
git pop    # bring back your stashed changes
11

In light of recent announcement of Mark II getting some final polish to head out to the general public, I think this issue should be looked at soon. It is my sense that like the music skill, the ability to set reminders and timers is on the that special short list of functions that the casual “layperson” will engage with. It will impact the general collective opinion of Mycroft’s quality and readiness. Some, but not all of this seems to be identified in open GitHub issues for the reminder skill.

Here is some further narrative of recent (21.02) interaction

“hey mycroft, set a reminder for 6:30am every day”
“hey mycroft, set a reminder every day at 6:33am”

Seems to hit fallback; tells me about "dysexutive syndrome"sometimes, sometimes “coldplay” (the band).

Ok, I messed up, but I want to try again, I don’t want to hear the erroneous reponse, so I try to stop mycroft with “Hy mycroft, cancel”, but he tells me about “Cancel Culture” (instead of just ceasing current fallback info reply)

Using some of the advice about “could you”, I get a reminder set. Now…

“hey mycroft, list reminders”
or “hey mycroft, list all reminders”

tells me about “apple reminders”

“hey mycroft, what is my next reminder”

Correctly describes next reminder.

“hey mycroft, cancel that reminder”

Seems to hit another fallback; tells me about “accidentals” (in music notation)

I think the double-stack of getting wrong result, then not successfully getting mycroft to stop telling me something I don’t want to hear about will frustrate typical folks. For Mycroft’s sake, I hope that both the Reminder skill and interrupting/cancelling/ceasing an active intent fulfillment gets some attention before this next Mark II full release milestone.

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