I Built a Free Out-of-Office Message Generator

How It Works

The technical implementation is straightforward. I built it as a Framer component on my website that calls a Vercel-hosted backend API. The backend sends your form inputs to Claude's API along with a custom prompt I developed that essentially says "write three creative OOO messages in these specific types of styles, make them genuinely funny and self-aware, but include all the practical information."

The prompt engineering was the interesting part. I fed Claude examples of OOO messages I'd written over the years and worked to distill what made them effective: the balance between humor and usefulness, the self-awareness about being an auto-reply, the variety of creative approaches. The current prompt captures that pretty well, though I'll probably continue refining it based on what messages people actually choose to use.

This is a practical, personality-filled tool that turns a mundane task into something more entertaining. It solves the very real problem of "I have PTO coming up but I'm drawing a complete blank on how to write an OOO message that doesn't make me sound like a corporate robot."

Think of it as the creative equivalent of a good recipe: someone figured out the right combination of ingredients and technique so you don't have to experiment from scratch every time.

Try It Yourself

The tool is completely free to use. No sign-up, no email collection, no weird monetization scheme. Just go to www.kendalricher.com/email-away-message-generator, fill out the quick form, and see what you get.

Pro tip: Don't overthink the "reason for being away" field. Sure, you can put "vacation" or "conference," but you can also put "alien abduction" or "time travel research" or "finally learning to juggle." The weirder your input, the more creative the output tends to be (while still maintaining professional appropriateness, because Claude knows better than to suggest anything that'll get you in trouble with HR).

And if you end up using one of the generated messages? I'd genuinely love to hear about it. Not because I need validation for my side project, but because I'm genuinely curious what resonates with people and what could be better.

At the end of the day, this wasn't about building something perfect. It was about building something fun and useful that makes one small part of professional life slightly less tedious. And isn't that worth a few hours of vibe coding?

How It Works

The technical implementation is straightforward. I built it as a Framer component on my website that calls a Vercel-hosted backend API. The backend sends your form inputs to Claude's API along with a custom prompt I developed that essentially says "write three creative OOO messages in these specific types of styles, make them genuinely funny and self-aware, but include all the practical information."

The prompt engineering was the interesting part. I fed Claude examples of OOO messages I'd written over the years and worked to distill what made them effective: the balance between humor and usefulness, the self-awareness about being an auto-reply, the variety of creative approaches. The current prompt captures that pretty well, though I'll probably continue refining it based on what messages people actually choose to use.

This is a practical, personality-filled tool that turns a mundane task into something more entertaining. It solves the very real problem of "I have PTO coming up but I'm drawing a complete blank on how to write an OOO message that doesn't make me sound like a corporate robot."

Think of it as the creative equivalent of a good recipe: someone figured out the right combination of ingredients and technique so you don't have to experiment from scratch every time.

Try It Yourself

The tool is completely free to use. No sign-up, no email collection, no weird monetization scheme. Just go to www.kendalricher.com/email-away-message-generator, fill out the quick form, and see what you get.

Pro tip: Don't overthink the "reason for being away" field. Sure, you can put "vacation" or "conference," but you can also put "alien abduction" or "time travel research" or "finally learning to juggle." The weirder your input, the more creative the output tends to be (while still maintaining professional appropriateness, because Claude knows better than to suggest anything that'll get you in trouble with HR).

And if you end up using one of the generated messages? I'd genuinely love to hear about it. Not because I need validation for my side project, but because I'm genuinely curious what resonates with people and what could be better.

At the end of the day, this wasn't about building something perfect. It was about building something fun and useful that makes one small part of professional life slightly less tedious. And isn't that worth a few hours of vibe coding?

How It Works

The technical implementation is straightforward. I built it as a Framer component on my website that calls a Vercel-hosted backend API. The backend sends your form inputs to Claude's API along with a custom prompt I developed that essentially says "write three creative OOO messages in these specific types of styles, make them genuinely funny and self-aware, but include all the practical information."

The prompt engineering was the interesting part. I fed Claude examples of OOO messages I'd written over the years and worked to distill what made them effective: the balance between humor and usefulness, the self-awareness about being an auto-reply, the variety of creative approaches. The current prompt captures that pretty well, though I'll probably continue refining it based on what messages people actually choose to use.

This is a practical, personality-filled tool that turns a mundane task into something more entertaining. It solves the very real problem of "I have PTO coming up but I'm drawing a complete blank on how to write an OOO message that doesn't make me sound like a corporate robot."

Think of it as the creative equivalent of a good recipe: someone figured out the right combination of ingredients and technique so you don't have to experiment from scratch every time.

Try It Yourself

The tool is completely free to use. No sign-up, no email collection, no weird monetization scheme. Just go to www.kendalricher.com/email-away-message-generator, fill out the quick form, and see what you get.

Pro tip: Don't overthink the "reason for being away" field. Sure, you can put "vacation" or "conference," but you can also put "alien abduction" or "time travel research" or "finally learning to juggle." The weirder your input, the more creative the output tends to be (while still maintaining professional appropriateness, because Claude knows better than to suggest anything that'll get you in trouble with HR).

And if you end up using one of the generated messages? I'd genuinely love to hear about it. Not because I need validation for my side project, but because I'm genuinely curious what resonates with people and what could be better.

At the end of the day, this wasn't about building something perfect. It was about building something fun and useful that makes one small part of professional life slightly less tedious. And isn't that worth a few hours of vibe coding?