The author of this article built an automated assistant using .NET MVC6, Entity Framework and Twilio on a Mac. The assistant can handle incoming calls from contacts and decide what to do with them based on the number calling. It also includes features like creating and editing contact information in the database. To connect with Twilio, ngrok is used to make the local environment accessible externally. A new endpoint called HandleCall is added to the HomeController.cs file to respond to requests coming from Twilio. The logic of this endpoint checks the database for a number on every incoming call and tells Twilio what to do via TwiML.