Set up a daily brief
One of the nicest things an agent can do: wake up before you, look at your day, and hand you a short brief. What's on the calendar, what you said you'd do, anything that needs a nudge. Here's how to set one up. No code, just asking.
Before you start
If you want the brief to include calendar and email, connect those integrations first. Follow Connect integrations, then come back here.
A short look at an agent and personal knowledge base in action.
How to set it up
Just ask, in plain language
Open your agent and tell it what you want. Something like:
"Every morning at 7am, send me a brief: today's calendar, anything due, and one gentle nudge if I've been avoiding something."
The agent turns that into a scheduled task for you. You don't write the schedule. You describe it, and it sets it up.
Make it a Local task
In Claude Code these are called Routines; in Codex, Automations. Choose the Local option, not the cloud one. Local tasks can read your knowledge base, your planner, and your notes. The cloud version can't, because your files live on your machine, not theirs.
Know the one catch
A Local task only runs while your computer is awake and the app is open. If your machine was asleep at 7am, it catches up once when you wake it. That's the trade-off for keeping everything on your own computer. If you want a brief that fires even when your laptop is off, that's the always-on hosted path. Ask David.
Get it on your phone (optional)
A brief you have to walk to your desk to read is easy to miss. Your agent can push it to your phone instead, so it lands like any other morning notification.
On Claude Code, this is built in. Pair the Claude phone app to your session (its "remote control" / connect-to-a-session feature), and when the brief finishes your agent can send a notification that reaches your phone, not just your desktop. You can even reply to it from the notification to send your agent your first instruction of the day. Just ask: "when the daily brief is done, send me a phone notification with the highlights."
On Codex, it's rougher. Codex can raise a desktop notification easily, but it has no built-in phone push tied to your session the way Claude Code does — getting a brief to your phone means wiring its notification hook to a separate push service yourself, or using the Codex cloud/web notification settings (a different, less reliable path). If phone delivery matters to you, Claude Code is the smoother pick today.
A heads-up on Claude Code notifications: the tool deliberately stays quiet when you're sitting right at the terminal (your screen already shows the output, so a notification would just be a duplicate). It's meant for when you've stepped away — which a scheduled brief usually is. If it ever reports "not sent" on a scheduled run, check your phone anyway; the report can occasionally be wrong even when the notification actually arrived.
Tune it over a few mornings
The first brief won't be perfect, and that's fine. Tell the agent what to add or cut: "skip the weather," "include my top three," "make it warmer." It adjusts the task. After a few days it'll feel like it was made for your brain, because it was.
Other scheduled tasks worth a try
- A weekly review every Sunday evening
- A nightly pass to tidy your knowledge base and update memory
- A monthly check-in on goals and finances
Stuck or need help?
Send a message and it comes straight to me. Tell me where you got stuck and I'll write back.
Rather have it done for you?
If following the steps yourself isn't how your brain works today, that's fine. On a Zoom call you share your screen and hand me control, and I set it up for you, right there on your own computer. You watch it come together and end the call with a working setup, nothing left on your plate.
Pick a time below. No pitch, no pressure, no homework beforehand.