Messages and WhatsApp on your Mac
The Mac app reads your chats each morning and files what needs you.
Switch on Messages or WhatsApp in Roma on your Mac and the Mac app reads your conversations once a day, then files what needs you as tasks on a list called Tasks from messages: a reply someone is waiting for, a promise you made, a date you were asked to hold. Each task quotes the message, links to the conversation and carries a draft reply. Roma only reads. It never sends a message for you.
Switching it on
In the Mac app, open Settings → Import. The Messages on this Mac section has two rows, Messages (iMessage and SMS) and WhatsApp, each with a switch. macOS lets an app read Messages only with Full Disk Access, so the Messages row says so the first time, with Open System Settings and Re-check beside it. Nothing is asked when Roma starts. WhatsApp needs no grant and reads as soon as WhatsApp for Mac is installed. A brand-new account's Create your first task list card offers the same switches.
The first switch-on creates the Tasks from messages list and runs the first check right away, whatever the hour. Check now in the section's head runs it again any time. Install Roma on your Mac covers getting the app.
The Tasks from messages list
The list is a board grouped by Action: Reply, Follow up and Catch up, each card with an App pill, Messages or WhatsApp. A reply task reads like "Reply to Noor about Thursday's dinner". Its body names the sender, the app and the time, quotes the message, says what is open, adds a draft reply in the conversation's language, and ends with a link, Open in Messages or Open in WhatsApp, that opens the conversation. A due date is set only when the message names a day or a time. The list is yours to rename, and its instructions tell the check who to leave out. Tasks from your apps describes the lists Roma keeps filled.
The Messages check
Every morning at 7:15 the Messages check, which stands beside the automations Roma starts with, reads yesterday and the day before, every conversation, so what you answered counts as answered, plus one month of older conversations per run until a year is covered. It files at most fifteen tasks a run and one task per conversation: a later message in the same thread is added to that task, never filed as a second one. Someone merely having the last word is not a task, nor is a "thanks", a reaction or a notice. Each run also picks up to two people you wrote with often who have gone quiet, and files a Catch up task with the last exchange and a line you could send.
The check runs while Roma is open on your Mac. A Mac asleep at 7:15 runs it once when it wakes with Roma open, before six in the evening. The run says nothing in your chat: each new task wears the blue dot, and so does the list's row in the sidebar, until you look. The check's page on the Automations page is where you change the list it files onto, under Files onto, and where you pause it. Delete the list and the next check files onto your Tasks list, saying so once.
Asking in the chat
Your operator can read the same conversations when you ask. "Using Messages, what did Noor say about the invoice?" finds the conversation and quotes the answer. Reads only: the operator never sends a message.
On your iPhone
The iPhone reads nothing itself, because Apple allows no app to read Messages on a phone. The tasks reach your phone through sync, and Settings → Connections → Messages on your Mac shows one row per Mac that is reading, with what it reads and whether it is awake. There is no switch on the phone: the sources are the Mac's, and the list is the Messages check's, which the phone shows too.
What leaves your Mac, and what does not
Roma on your Mac opens the Messages and WhatsApp stores read-only, keeps no copy past a read and indexes nothing. A check sends the lines it needs to Roma's servers to decide what needs you and write the tasks. The text of your messages is not kept in your chat history, and memory learns nothing from them. A task keeps only what you see on it: the quoted line, the sender, the time and the link. Signing out of the Mac app switches both sources off. The privacy policy says the same under connected apps.
Questions people ask
Does Roma send replies for me?
No. The draft in a task is for you to copy into the conversation. Open in Messages or Open in WhatsApp takes you there, and sending is yours.
Can I choose the list the tasks land on?
Yes. Open the Messages check from the Automations page and pick any task list under Files onto. Settings carries no list picker on the Mac or the iPhone.
What if my Mac is off at 7:15?
The run finds no Mac and files nothing. The check runs once when your Mac wakes with Roma open that day, before six in the evening, and the next morning's run covers the day it missed.