How to Create an AI Executive Assistant in 10 Minutes

I spend about 6 hours a week on work that isn't really work. Calendar shuffling. Inbox triage. Pulling context before meetings. Writing follow-up emails that say the same thing every time.

You probably do too. If you manage a team, talk to customers, or run a company, the admin load around your actual job eats 5 to 8 hours every week. That's a full working day, gone to tasks that feel productive but aren't.

An AI executive assistant handles the recurring, structured parts. You keep the decisions. This tutorial walks you through building one in Spinnable that triages your inbox, preps meeting briefs, and sends follow-up emails after every call.

Total setup time: about 10 minutes.

What You Need

• A Spinnable account (free to start)
• Access to your email (Gmail or Outlook) and calendar
• 10 minutes

Step 1: Create the Worker

Go to your Spinnable dashboard and click "Create Worker." Give it a name. I called mine "Alex, Executive Assistant" because I wanted something my team would recognize in email threads and Slack notifications.

Set the role description. This matters more than you think. The role description tells the worker how to behave across every task you assign it. Here's what I use:

"You are an executive assistant for Vasco, CEO of Spinnable. Your communication style is professional, concise, and proactive. You manage inbox triage, meeting preparation, and follow-up communications. When uncertain, flag items for review rather than acting independently. Default to brevity in all messages."

That last line, "default to brevity," saves you from AI-generated walls of text. Without it, you'll get three paragraphs where one sentence would do.

Next, connect your email. Spinnable supports Gmail and Outlook. The worker gets its own email address (e.g., alex@yourcompany.spinnable.ai) and can also read and draft in your inbox with your permission. I use both: Alex has its own address for external scheduling and reads my inbox for triage.

This step takes about 2 minutes.

Step 2: Define Inbox Triage Rules

This is where the real value starts. Open the worker's instructions and define your priority system. I use three tiers:

P1 (Notify immediately): Emails from investors, board members, and key clients. The worker flags these in Slack with a one-line summary and a direct link to the email. I see them within minutes, even when I'm deep in product work and not checking my inbox.

P2 (Summarize and draft): Emails from my team and partners. The worker reads the full thread, writes a two-sentence summary, and drafts a reply for me to review. I approve or edit. Most days, I approve 80% of drafts without changes.

P3 (Archive or auto-respond): Cold outreach, newsletters, vendor pitches. The worker archives obvious noise. For borderline messages, it sends a polite holding reply: "Thanks for reaching out. I'll review this when time allows."

Here's how that looks as worker instructions:

"Triage every incoming email using these rules:
P1: Emails from [list of key domains and contacts]. Notify immediately via Slack with subject line, sender, and a one-line summary.
P2: Emails from @yourcompany.com domains. Summarize the thread in two sentences and draft a reply.
P3: All other emails. Archive marketing and promotional emails automatically. Auto-respond to cold outreach with the standard holding template."

You can update these rules at any time. The worker also adapts to your patterns. After two weeks, mine started correctly flagging emails from people I replied to frequently, even when they weren't on the original P1 list. It noticed I always responded to certain senders quickly and promoted them to P1 on its own.

Step 3: Set Up Meeting Prep

Before Spinnable, I spent 5 to 10 minutes before every external meeting searching LinkedIn, scanning old emails, and checking our CRM. Multiply that by 6 or 7 meetings a day, and you've lost an hour before any conversation actually starts.

Now Alex does all of it and delivers a brief to my Slack 30 minutes before the call.

The trigger: 30 minutes before any calendar event with external attendees.

The action: the worker pulls context from LinkedIn profiles, your CRM records, and recent email threads with each attendee. Then it sends a structured brief to Slack.

Here's a real example of what lands in my Slack channel:

Meeting: Product partnership call with Sarah Chen, VP Product at Acme Corp
Time: 2:30 PM
Context:
• Last email exchange: March 14, discussed API integration timeline
• She mentioned a Q2 launch deadline in her last message
• Acme Corp: Series B, 82 employees, currently using a competitor for workflow automation
• You met at SaaStr 2025 and connected on LinkedIn in September
Suggested talking points: Integration timeline, Q2 deadline alignment, pilot scope

I read this in 30 seconds. No research needed. I walk into every meeting with full context on who I'm talking to and what we last discussed.

To configure this, add a scheduled trigger in the worker's workflow settings. Set "30 minutes before calendar events" as the trigger and "send meeting brief to Slack" as the action. Point it at your CRM and email integrations. The worker handles the rest.

Step 4: Automate Follow-Up Emails

After a meeting ends, you need to send a follow-up. The structure is almost always the same: thanks for the time, summary of what you discussed, clear next steps, timeline.

The worker handles this within one hour of each meeting ending. It pulls from your calendar event notes (I jot two or three bullet points during each call) and any relevant prior email threads with the attendees.

The worker drafts the follow-up and routes it to you for approval. You see it in Slack with two options: send as-is, or edit first. I edit maybe one in five, usually to add a specific detail or adjust tone for a particular relationship.

Here's the approval flow in practice:

1. Meeting ends at 3:00 PM
2. By 3:45 PM, the worker drafts a follow-up based on your notes and prior context
3. You get a Slack notification: "Follow-up draft ready for Sarah Chen. [Approve] [Edit]"
4. You tap Approve. The email sends from your address.

Your active effort: about 15 seconds per meeting. The follow-up that used to slip to the next day (or get forgotten entirely) now goes out within the hour, every time.

Results After 30 Days

I've run this setup for two months now. Here are the actual numbers:

• Time saved: 6 hours per week (down from ~8 hours of admin to ~2)
• Response time to P1 emails: under 4 minutes on average, down from 2 to 3 hours
• Meeting prep time: 0 minutes of active work (30 seconds reading the Slack brief)
• Follow-up emails sent within 1 hour: 95%, up from roughly 60%
• Total setup time: 11 minutes

The biggest surprise wasn't the time saved. It was the consistency. I no longer forget follow-ups. Every external meeting gets a brief. Every important email gets a fast response. The quality of my communication with investors, clients, and partners improved because the repetitive parts happen reliably, without me thinking about them.

The second surprise: my team started asking for their own workers. My head of sales built one in 15 minutes after watching mine work for a week. Three people on the team now run EA workers with slightly different triage rules tuned to their specific roles and contacts.

For a comparison of all the AI executive assistant options available in 2026, see our honest comparison of 12 AI executive assistants.

You can build this in 10 minutes. Start at spinnable.ai.