☀️ 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 can message you on Telegram (a documented channel), read email through its IMAP trigger or a mail CLI such as himalaya (see our email guide), and run a prompt on a schedule with its cron automations, so the brief is waiting when you wake up. It is self-hosted, so you pay only for the model you connect.

Alternatives worth considering

• Hermes — Hermes cron jobs can deliver the same brief to Telegram, and its memory suits longer follow-ups (reply drafts, rescheduling)
• IronClaw — If you're nervous about an agent reading your personal email, IronClaw keeps secrets out of its sandboxed tools and limits each tool to allowlisted hosts

Setup steps

1. Step 1: Connect Telegram and email

   Add the Telegram channel (a BotFather token; see our Telegram guide) and give OpenClaw read access to email through the IMAP trigger or himalaya (see our email guide). Use a dedicated mailbox or app password where you can, and keep access read-only. For a calendar, connect a CLI or MCP server you have read first; OpenClaw's docs have no built-in calendar page.

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 automation

   Create a cron automation (see the schedules and delivery pages in OpenClaw's automation docs) that runs at 6:55am, reads the sources, summarises with a small, low-cost model in one batched call rather than twenty, and delivers 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.
• Using a flagship model for summaries. A small, low-cost model is usually enough to flag urgent emails. Check the price gap on our model pricing table and keep the expensive model 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)

Cost: Model usage only. Model rates change often; check the model pricing table or the cost calculator for current figures.

Related guides

• Email skill setup
• Telegram skill setup
• SOUL.md guide
• Cost optimization
• Model API pricing