Founder
The Morning Briefing That Replaced My First Hour of Work
Key Takeaway
A daily 6am cron synthesizes my calendar, urgent emails, and deadlines into one Telegram message — replacing 45-60 minutes of manual morning prep with a 2-minute read.
The Problem
Every morning looked the same. Wake up. Open Gmail. Scroll through 40-60 overnight emails. Open Google Calendar. Check what's today, what's tomorrow. Cross-reference: do I need to prep for any meetings? Open Notion for project deadlines. Check Slack for anything urgent from the team.
Forty-five minutes to an hour. Every single morning. Before I'd done a single productive thing.
The worst part: it felt productive. I was "staying on top of things." But I wasn't making decisions or creating anything. I was just loading context into my brain that a machine could load for me.
What I actually needed every morning was simple: What's happening today? What needs my attention? What can I ignore? Give me that in 60 seconds, and I'll spend the other 58 minutes doing real work.
The Solution
A daily cron job at 6:00 UTC (7:00 CET, my timezone) that pulls the next 48 hours of calendar events plus urgent unread emails, synthesizes everything into a structured briefing, and delivers it as a single Telegram message.
Not a list of raw events. Not a forwarded email dump. A briefing — with context, prep notes, and prioritization. Like having a chief of staff who read everything overnight and gives you the executive summary over coffee.
The Process
The cron configuration:
yamlShow code
- name: morning-briefing
schedule: "0 6 * * *" # 6am UTC = 7am CET
channel: telegram
model: claude-sonnet-4-20250514
task: |
Generate my morning briefing. Pull data from these sources:
1. CALENDAR (next 48 hours):
- Use gog to fetch all events for today and tomorrow
- For each meeting: title, time, attendees, location/link
- Add prep notes: who are these people, what did we last discuss, what's the likely agenda
2. EMAIL (urgent unread):
- Use gog to check unread emails labeled URGENT or ACTION
- Summarize each in one line: sender, topic, what they need
3. DEADLINES:
- Check if any calendar events are deadlines (keywords: "due", "deadline", "submit", "launch")
- Flag anything due within 48 hours
Format the briefing as:
📋 MORNING BRIEFING — [date]
🗓 TODAY ([count] meetings)
• [time] — [meeting] with [people] — [one-line context]
🗓 TOMORROW ([count] meetings)
• [time] — [meeting] with [people] — [one-line context]
📧 NEEDS ATTENTION ([count])
• [sender]: [one-line summary + what they need]
⚠️ DEADLINES
• [item] — due [when]
🎯 SUGGESTED PRIORITIES
1. [highest impact action]
2. [second priority]
3. [third priority]
The agent uses the gog CLI to pull both data sources:
bashShow code
# Calendar: next 48 hours
gog calendar list --from "today" --to "+2d" --format json
# Urgent/action emails
gog gmail list --unread --label "URGENT" --format json
gog gmail list --unread --label "ACTION" --format json
Here's what a real briefing looks like in Telegram:
View details
📋 MORNING BRIEFING — Thursday, March 12
🗓 TODAY (3 meetings)
• 10:00 — LP call with Meridian Capital — They asked about Q4 performance last time.
Prep: Have the updated deck ready. They care about DPI.
• 14:00 — Mr.Chief standup — Thom pushed the gateway fix yesterday, check if it's in prod.
• 17:00 — Coffee with Marc (Station F) — He's exploring AI infra for his portfolio.
Angle: Show the multi-agent orchestration demo.
🗓 TOMORROW (2 meetings)
• 09:00 — Board prep sync — Pierre wants the agenda finalized today.
• 15:00 — Podcast recording (AI Builders) — Topic: "Why agents beat chatbots."
Prep: They sent questions last week, review the doc.
📧 NEEDS ATTENTION (2)
• Legal counsel: Signature needed on the amended partnership agreement. Deadline Friday.
• Thom: Blocking issue on the cron scheduler — needs architecture decision.
⚠️ DEADLINES
• Partnership agreement signature — due Friday March 13
• Podcast prep doc review — due today (recording tomorrow)
🎯 SUGGESTED PRIORITIES
1. Sign the partnership agreement (legal deadline, 5 min)
2. Reply to Thom on scheduler architecture (unblocks the team)
3. Review podcast prep doc before tomorrow's recording
The Results
| Metric | Before | After | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morning prep time | 45-60 min | 2 min | -96% |
| Missed meeting prep | 1-2/week | 0 | -100% |
| First productive hour starts | 9:00-9:30 AM | 7:15 AM | -2 hours earlier |
| Surprise meetings (no context) | 3-4/week | 0 | -100% |
| Calendar + email apps opened before noon | 4-6 times | 0-1 | -90% |
The biggest win isn't time saved. It's cognitive clarity. I wake up, read one message, and know exactly what my day looks like. No decision fatigue about what to check first. No anxiety about what I might be missing. The agent already checked everything.
Try It Yourself
- Configure
gogwith your Google Workspace account (calendar + Gmail) - Start with calendar-only briefings — email integration adds complexity
- Customize the prep notes prompt with your actual contacts and their context
- Run it for a week and note what's missing from the briefing
- Iterate the prompt until the briefing matches what you'd manually compile
Pro tip: add a "suggested priorities" section. The agent ranking your day by impact is worth more than the raw data.
My first hour used to be Gmail and Google Calendar. Now it's a 2-minute Telegram read and straight into deep work. The agent handles the context loading. I handle the decisions.
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