Give your AI its own phone

What gets forwarded

Five event kinds, each switchable on its own. Every one arrives as tagged plain text an agent can read without a parser.

Incoming SMS

Tagged [event] sms, carrying the sender and the full message body, the moment the phone receives it. The agent answers from the push instead of polling an inbox.

App notifications

Tagged [event] notification, carrying the app name, its package id, and the notification title and text. This is the one that catches flight delays, delivery updates and the ride that just pulled up — anything an app already tells you about.

Incoming call

Tagged [event] incoming_call, carrying the number and the contact name when the phone can resolve one, while it is still ringing. This is the one event that is on unless you explicitly switch it off: a missing events.incomingCalls key does not drop RINGING events, only an explicit off does.

Device online and offline

Tagged [event] device_online or [event] device_offline when the companion's WebSocket connects or drops. An agent that has to know whether the phone is reachable before it queues work reads these.

New pairing request

Tagged [event] pairing with the status pending_approval when an unknown device asks to join. The payload names the next step — approve it from the dashboard, or with aster devices approve — so nobody quietly joins your server.

Where the events go

Aster POSTs to one destination of your choosing. There is no Aster relay in the middle and no account to create — the server on your machine talks directly to the endpoint you named.

• An agent webhook

  The OpenClaw-style hook shape, which ClawdBot and MoltBot also speak. Aster POSTs to {endpoint}{webhookPath} — by default http://localhost:18789/hooks/agent — with an Authorization: Bearer token that has to match the token configured on the gateway.

• A Mattermost incoming webhook

  The same tagged text posted as { "text": "..." }, with no Bearer token. Create the webhook in Mattermost under Integrations, paste the URL into the dashboard, and optionally override the channel it lands in.

$ aster set-event-forwarding

  Channel type      agent webhook
  Endpoint          http://localhost:18789
  Webhook path      /hooks/agent
  Bearer token      ****  (must match the gateway)
  Events            sms, notifications, incoming calls,
                    device online/offline, pairing requests

  Saved to ~/.aster/event-forwarding.json

{
  "message": "[skill] aster\n[event] incoming_call\n[device_id] …\n[model] …\n[data-number] +15551212\n[data-contact] Jane",
  "wakeMode": "now",
  "deliver": true,
  "channel": "whatsapp",
  "to": "+15550001111"
}

What people build with it

Each of these is a forwarded event plus one or two tool calls. The tool names are the callable ones, exactly as an MCP client lists them.

• Record a clip when someone is at the door

  Leave the phone facing the entrance. When your doorbell or intercom app posts a notification, that event reaches the agent, which records a few seconds of video and texts it to you. The trigger is the notification the other app already posts, not motion detection — if that app stays silent, so does this.

  Tools used

  • aster_record_video
  • aster_send_sms
• Be called when your flight changes

  The airline app posts a gate change or a delay, the agent reads the forwarded notification and phones you to say it out loud — useful precisely when you are not looking at a screen. Understand how that audio works: Aster speaks through the loudspeaker and the call microphone picks it up, so it is acoustic coupling, not audio routed into the call stream. Keep the phone in a quiet room, expect quality to vary by device, and treat it as a nudge that gets through rather than a hands-free conversation.

  Tools used

  • aster_read_notifications
  • aster_make_call_with_voice
• Hear your ride arrive from the next room

  The ride-hailing app says the driver is two minutes out. The agent gets the notification, speaks the line aloud on the spare phone and texts you the driver and plate so you are not reading a map on the pavement.

  Tools used

  • aster_read_notifications
  • aster_speak_tts
  • aster_send_sms
• Look in on a pet while you are out

  Prop the phone where the dog usually sleeps and have the agent take a photo and send it to you. Aster runs no scheduler, so the cadence is your AI client's: a cron job, a scheduled agent run, or a standing instruction in the assistant itself. Aster's side of it is one camera call and one message per run.

  Tools used

  • aster_take_photo
  • aster_send_sms
• Check the nursery without opening the door

  The same shape as the pet check, and quieter than walking in. A photo goes out on whatever rhythm your agent keeps — again, that clock belongs to the AI client, not to Aster. Point the phone at the cot, not at the room, and remember the photo travels wherever you told the agent to send it.

  Tools used

  • aster_take_photo
  • aster_send_sms
• Answer for you while you are driving or in a meeting

  An SMS lands, the agent reads it, decides whether it can be answered without you, and replies with something true — that you are driving and will call back — rather than a canned auto-reply. You set the rules for what it may answer and what it must hold for you.

  Tools used

  • aster_read_sms
  • aster_send_sms

Aster ships no scheduler and no rules engine. It exposes 49 tools and pushes these events; deciding when to act, and what counts as worth waking you for, stays with your AI client. See every tool Aster exposes .