The AI assistant that catches our Head of Content’s loose ends (and never sends a message)

Vakarė Simanaitytė, Hostinger’s Head of Content, used to be her own reminder system. “I felt I had to be on standby on Slack a lot,” she says, “to recall these things, prosecute up on threads, create certain nothing slips through the cracks. And a lot of things did in the end.”

So in October, she spent concerning an hr chatting alongside Claude and built her own AI agent, an aide that plant through her apps on a schedule, no code required. Today, the aide gathers the free ends from her meetings, Slack threads, email, and weekly notes into a sole Jira inbox, and she decides what happens to all one.

The aide gathers the free ends, but she set resolute limits: it never sends a message, never puts a project into her plan, and treats item unclear as a recommendation until she confirms it.

Why small promises kept slipping

The tasks that slipped were mostly small ones, akin item Vakarė stated she’d do on a call or a Slack thread she meant to arrive rear to. She had tried the customary fixes. “To-do lists, Trello, handwritten notes, all of it,” she says. “Nothing worked for a lengthy duration of period for me, since I would endure it.”

“In my role, I need to appearance following a lot of things,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll citation an idea, or person alternatively will, and I’ll assign it. But I motionless need to inspect in following several period that it’s done.”

Those tasks lived everywhere: several sat in gathering notes, several in Slack threads or email, and several in her retro, the abbreviated consideration she writes for herself at the end of all week. A few ended up on distinct to-do lists, and all period a new precedence landed, they slid additional down.

Holding all of it in her caput wasn’t free, either. “It additionally disbursal me a lot of mental energy,” she says.

Busy days made it worse. On a latest Monday, she spent the entire day penning a scheme document. “Usually this is the period I would have dropped my to-do things and fair forgotten them,” she says. Now her aide won’t let that happen: “It volition prompt me of things that I’ve dropped and things that I’ve forgotten.”

How she built her aide without penning code

Vakarė built the aide during a two-hour slot she and a coworker had set apart to examine AI. She already knew what she wanted. “I cognize anywhere my issue is, and I fair desire to fix it,” she remembers thinking.

Her archetypal halt was DEX, Hostinger’s inner AI assistant. But DEX lives in Slack, and she was trying to escape the noise, not add additional notifications to it. So she moved to Claude Cowork, Anthropic’s desktop app that can run tasks on a schedule.

Instead of sending her additional pings, Claude plant in the background: it collects everything she motionless needs to act on from her meetings, email, and Slack (with DEX’s help) into a sole project catalog that she checks whenever she’s ready.

She describes all job in plain language: what to check, what to do alongside the results, and whenever to run. The app afterward runs the job on that schedule, without her.

Next, she connected Claude to Google Calendar, Google Drive, Gmail, and Jira, the project tracker anywhere her to-dos now land. None of it requires code. The easiest way to nexus an app, she says, is to ask Claude to do it, afterward sign in and endorse access.

Her calls additionally depart written notes behind, which gives Claude improved material. She started alongside Gemini’s note-taking in Google Meet and afterward switched to Wispr Flow, which she finds better. She calls them the biggest aspect in quality: the additional meetings have them, the small the AI has to guess.

Slack was the tricky part. Claude isn’t connected to Hostinger’s Slack, so DEX motionless handles that part. At first, Vakarė copied DEX’s summaries into Claude by hand, until Claude suggested putting them in a Google Doc it could peruse on its own.

Every day at 5 p.m., a DEX workflow finds public-channel threads anywhere person mentioned her and she hasn’t replied, afterward writes a abbreviated study into a Google Doc. Each weekday at 8 a.m., Claude says that doc and turns item motionless open into a task.

So her two AI assistants never conversation to all other: they continue notes through a shared doc, akin coworkers who sit on distinct floors.

For Vakarė, the Slack study matters most. “That’s honestly the big thing,” she says. “It fair removed so much material from my head. It’s specified a lifesaver.” It additionally helps her gait her replies. Many mentions, she’s found, lone need a quick “thank you” or a thumbs-up, and the summary points those out. “You don’t need to interrupt your concentration to respond,” she says.

Three weeks in, her to-do scheme runs on scheduled jobs and a set of rules that create the aide additional trustworthy.

A week alongside Vakarė’s assistant

These are the jobs that nourish Vakarė’s to-do list:

Every hour, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The gathering job says the notes from all call and turns her next steps into Jira tasks, sized from 15 minutes to multiple days, alongside a nexus to the notes. If a call has no notes, it suggests a apt project according to the calendar event, akin leaving feedback following a hiring call.

Weekdays, 7:50 a.m. The freelancer answer job checks her email threads alongside freelance writers. When she owes a reply, it creates a project and a ready-to-edit Gmail draft.

Weekdays, 8 a.m. The dawn triage imports the Slack threads that need her, confirms or dismisses suggested tasks alongside a written reason, tags all one to her quarterly goals, and sends her a abbreviated summary: her top three for the day, quick wins, and what’s waiting on her.

Tuesdays and Thursdays. The follow-up inspect goes through everything she’s waiting on: who to nudge (with a outline message), what’s rear on her, and what to drop.

Wednesdays. The scheme assessment measures the setup itself, specified as how lengthy tasks delay and how many automatic decisions she reversed, and proposes up to three changes. She picks which ones to apply.

Fridays, 1 p.m. Retro prep gathers the facts for her weekly retro: what got done, anywhere the week went by goal, and what slipped. If a goal’s deadline is near and nothing has moved, it says so.

Then there’s Vakarė’s part. Every project the aide creates lands in one Jira inbox, a holding heap anywhere it waits until she decides anywhere it goes: her scheme for this week, a follow-up catalog for item anywhere the domain is in person else’s court, or a catalog of tasks to hand complete in her one-on-ones.

She meant to apparent that inbox all morning, but alongside calls frequently starting at 8:30 or 9, a regular routine never stuck. “I’m fair not that benevolent of person,” she says. Her “inbox bare by 9:30” mark unsuccessful all day, so she changed it to “cleared at smallest twice a week” and now sorts in bursts. As she puts it, “You have to be honest alongside yourself concerning the benevolent of individual you are.”

Six rules that keep the to-do catalog from turning into noise

Turning all citation into a project would fair toggle one disorder for another, so Vakarė’s fix was a abbreviated set of rules. “Without these, an automated to-do catalog quickly turns into noise,” she writes in her setup notes.

• One inbox. Nothing lands immediately in her plan, and formerly she moves a task, it’s hers.
• Suggest, don’t decide. Unclear tasks arrive in as “suggested.” The triage confirms or dismisses them alongside a written reason, so she can overrule it.
• Status says whose move it is. A project marked “Waiting on someone” method the domain is elsewhere. Anything alternatively on the follow-up catalog counts as hers.
• Make the next stage small. Every project comes alongside a size, a nexus to its source, and a outline Slack communication or email anywhere one is needed.
• Never send. The scheme drafts, labels, and reminds. Emails and messages go out lone whenever she sends them.
• Failures say so. If an import or study fails to run, the job creates a project alternatively of remaining silent.

Some of the rules came from the aide trying to do additional than Vakarė wanted. It kept offering to automatically kind new tasks into her weeks, and she kept saying no. “I desire this on me,” she says. “It’s my schedule.”

It additionally started moving follow-ups into her current week, and she kept moving them back. That alter was reverted quickly, and the scheme now asks her to decide formerly a project has bounced twice.

The drafts are motionless a activity in progress. “It’s fine for emails since it’s benevolent of formal, but for Slack, everything it suggests is a small bit too ceremonial for me,” Vakarė says. “But it’s motionless helpful.”

The “never send” regulation may audio akin a big limitation, but in custom it matches how agents behave in our own data: whenever we analyzed 213 myriad AI email actions in Agentic Mail, lone 2.5% engaged the delegate itself sending an email. The dense lifting is in the reading, and that’s the job Vakarė gave her assistant.

Some decisions remain off the assistant’s catalog entirely. One is what to drop, “which no automation volition do for me,” as Vakarė puts it. She additionally keeps one part of her week for herself: following the Friday job gathers what got done, she writes her own consideration on how she felt and how she showed up as a leader.

What changed, and what the aide motionless can’t do

When Vakarė shared her setup alongside the team, she estimated the aide was already preservation her “probably concerning an hr of activity all day and a lot of mental area to do the material that matters.”

The idea equal followed her home. “I’ve been tracking my budget, but I keep spending prosperity and I don’t cognize where. It fair slips through,” she says. “So I was like, ‘Okay, perchance I can build something.'” She didn’t desire her individual finances in her activity tools, so she rebuilt the identical form alongside a distinct AI aide and a Google Sheet.

Back at work, her aide motionless has limits, and Vakarė lists them as plainly as its features:

• The app has to remain open. In her setup, the jobs run lone during the Claude desktop app is open.
• Slack safety is partial. The DEX study covers the community channels DEX tracks, not personal channels, DMs, or collection DMs, so she motionless checks her DMs before logging off.
• The backlog keeps growing. Small, low-priority tasks heap up, so she’s thinking concerning splitting the backlog into next duration and next quarter.

“This evidently doesn’t substitute my customary Slack work,” she wrote whenever she shared the setup. “It fair helps me capture those free ends.”

What you need to build your own AI to-do assistant

Vakarė’s direction is to commencement smaller than she did: choice one source, akin gathering follow-ups, and one regular summary. Add Slack, follow-ups, and a weekly retro lone following sorting the inbox has rotate into a habit.

Here’s the minimum you need:

• A origin that already exists. Meeting notes are the easiest start, since the next steps are already written down.
• An AI tool that runs jobs on a schedule. The tool additionally needs to nexus to the apps anywhere your notes and tasks live.
• One location for tasks. Before Vakarė connected Jira, Claude suggested a Google Sheet, which is plentifulness for a lighter workload.
• A few rules from day one. Suggestions remain suggestions until you verify them; nothing gets deleted, and nothing gets sent without you.
• A sorting beat you’ll keep. Daily didn’t activity for Vakarė, but twice a week does. Pick the mark that matches how you really work.

Scheduled jobs are a paid characteristic in the two Claude and Hostinger Agent. The liberated type of the idea is to run the identical immediate yourself all dawn and paste the results into a Google Sheet.

What happened whenever our Content Team rebuilt the aide in Hostinger Agent

Vakarė’s setup leans on DEX, a tool built for Hostinger’s own teams. To see whether anyone could build this without it, our satisfied squad rebuilt the simplest type of her setup in Hostinger Agent.

Our type had three parts: a Google Doc containing gathering notes, a Google Sheet serving as the project list, and a operating job in Hostinger Agent that converts one into the other. Hostinger Agent connects to all app in her setup, and jobs need the Agent Plus plan.

Setting up the job took concerning six minutes of chat. A abbreviated guided setup asked what the job should do, which apps it may use, and whether it should run on a agenda or whenever item changes in an app. We picked lone Google Drive, Docs, and Sheets, leaving Gmail out so the job can’t contact email.

The Agent improved on our instructions. Before preservation the job, it changed our “never delete rows” regulation to “never delete or modify existing rows,” which is nearer to Vakarė’s regulation that a project is hers formerly she’s moved it.

We let the job run all 10 minutes for additional than two hours alongside the browser tab closed. All 15 runs completed, and all one took 21 to 80 seconds and used 3.5 to 9.7 credits.

The job added a new project we’d assigned to ourselves in the notes, kept a project assigned to the entire squad as a recommendation since no one was named, and never duplicated a row. When nothing had changed, the run summary stated so and remaining the panel alone.

We had to create a brace of adjustments. In our archetypal manual run, the summary listed a skipped item that didn’t be in the notes. Asking the Agent to citation the exact origin row fixed that, and the quotes held in the scheduled runs following that.

Later, the job re-added a project we’d deleted, and the new row stated “1h” alternatively of the “half day” it got the archetypal time. In Vakarė’s setup, a incorrect size akin that would get caught whenever she sorts her inbox.

We afterward switched the job to run whenever the notes doc changed, which the Agent had suggested during setup to evade bare runs that motionless disbursal credits. The archetypal triggered run came 14 minutes following our archetypal edit and picked up the two new tasks at once.

The uncomplicated type handled the center iteration on its own: notes became tasks, alongside no duplicates, and nothing happened whenever nothing changed. It motionless needed a individual check, which is the identical instruction as Vakarė’s rules. It additionally covers lone a piece of her system, alongside no Slack, Jira, triage, or follow-ups.

Vakarė already sees uses fine beyond her own inbox. “I’m beautiful certain I’m not the lone individual on the earth alongside 6,500 emails,” she says. Her idea: a job that checks an inbox all hr and pulls out what matters, akin client orders, complaints, or brands asking to collaborate.

As for her, she motionless spends her days in Slack – that’s part of the job, following all. But she’s no longer on standby, trying to clasp all commitment in her head. The free ends delay for her in one inbox until she’s prepared to do, chase, or autumn them.

“You can get status, you can get money. All of it’s recoverable,” Vakarė says. “The lone item that isn’t is time.”