☀️ Morning Brief — Email, Calendar, News in One Message

The problem

You open your laptop and immediately lose 30 minutes scanning email, calendar, Slack, and industry news. By the time you're caught up, you've already reacted to five other people's priorities before starting your own. The cost isn't the reading time — it's the context-switching that kills your morning focus block.

The outcome

A single message in Telegram or email at 7am: 3 most urgent emails flagged, today's calendar with prep notes, and 3 AI industry stories worth knowing. Everything else can wait until 10am. You reclaim the first two hours of your day for real work.

Why OpenClaw

OpenClaw's skill system ships with email, calendar, and Telegram integrations out of the box. Routines run on cron so the brief is waiting when you wake up. Self-hosted means zero per-message fees even if you expand to a household setup.

Alternatives worth considering

• Hermes — Great if you also want longer-running follow-ups (reply drafts, calendar rescheduling)
• IronClaw — If you're nervous about an agent reading your personal email, IronClaw's sandbox is the safest option

Setup steps

1. Step 1: Install email + calendar + Telegram skills

   Add the three built-in skills from the OpenClaw skill registry. Grant read-only access to email and calendar; Telegram needs a bot token from @BotFather (3 minutes to create).

2. Step 2: Write SOUL.md with brief preferences

   Tell OpenClaw who you are, what you care about, and how terse you want summaries. Include a priority list (clients > team > newsletters) so it knows what to flag vs. what to ignore.

3. Step 3: Create the daily-brief routine

   Write a routine file that triggers at 6:55am, fetches the three data sources, summarizes via Haiku (batch the emails — one API call, not 20), and posts to Telegram.

4. Step 4: Add the news feed

   Point the routine at OpenClawDatabase's RSS feed (or any industry source) and tell the model to pick 3 stories relevant to your work. The prompt matters — specify 'skip vendor announcements, focus on practical techniques.'

5. Step 5: Test and iterate

   Run it manually the first 3 days. Adjust the summarization prompt until the brief reads the way you'd write it yourself. The goal is trust — you should never feel the need to double-check the source inbox.

Example prompt

Summarize the 3 most urgent emails from my inbox, today's calendar with any prep notes, and 3 AI agent news stories worth knowing. Skip receipts, newsletters, and vendor announcements. Output as a Telegram message under 400 words.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Summarizing every email. The point is to flag the 3 that need action, not paraphrase all 40. If the digest is longer than your original inbox glance, the prompt is wrong.
• Running on Sonnet for summaries. Haiku is 10× cheaper and plenty capable for email/calendar summarization. Pin the summarization step to Haiku; reserve Sonnet for the rare case that needs real reasoning.
• Ignoring the 'snooze this' rule. Your brief should suppress recurring low-value items (newsletters, receipts) after the first time. Otherwise it becomes noise and you'll stop reading it.

Cost breakdown (monthly)

Total: $5–15/month. Costs assume typical usage; heavy use can run higher.

Related guides

• Email skill setup
• Telegram skill setup
• SOUL.md guide
• Cost optimization