How Gemini Figured Out My Nephew's Name

Summary

Posted on Sat 17 May 2025 I wrote an MCP server to give LLMs read-only access to my emails. Here is the chat log. ME: I need to know Donovan’s son’s name. It is buried in some email somewhere. Devise a strategy for finding it. Do NOT use any tools till we’ve discussed it through. GEMINI: Okay, I will devise a strategy to find Donovan’s son’s name and discuss it with you. Strategy: Search for emails from Donovan: Use the search_emails tool with a query like “from:Donovan”. This will give us a list of email threads. Search for keywords within Donovan’s emails: Refine the search to include keywords that might be associated with a son. For example: “from:Donovan son”, “from:Donovan boy”, “from:Donovan name is”. We can also try terms related to birth announcements if we suspect the name might be in one, e.g., “from:Donovan born”, “from:Donovan baby”. Examine promising threads/messages: If the search yields specific messages or threads, I will suggest we look at their content using get_thread_by_id or get_message_content_by_id. Iterate: If the initial searches are not successful, we can try broader keywords or look for emails to Donovan that might congratulate him or mention his son. Do you want to proceed with the first step, or would you like to refine this strategy? ME: OK. Go ahead and try them. No need to prompt me any more. GEMINI: The search “from:Donovan son” returned a promising result: Subject: Son Date: Sat, 30 May 2015 23:32:41 +0500 ID: CAMJZR9aPWpGbd3VLyPA+B-=LjcNo4YTmtw03TvQri4wxHfrA@mail.gmail.com Thread ID: 0000000000007a96 I’ll get the content of this message. This email is about Donovan’s cousin Aliyah’s son, Albert Hamming, not Donovan’s own son. I’ll try other keywords. The search “from:Donovan baby” yielded one result: Subject: powertoddler! Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:32:58 +0500 Thread ID: 0000000000004e70 I’ll check this message. This email links to a YouTube video and mentions “the baby”. This is a strong lead. However, the email is from 2011. Whil...