The AI Morning Briefing Every EA Needs — And How to Build It

Here's what used to happen every morning.

I'd open Slack. Or my inbox. Sometimes both at the same time, which, honestly, is a form of self-harm.

Before I'd had a full sip of coffee, I was already in it. Reacting. Triaging. Catching up on threads I wasn't in. Responding to things that felt urgent but probably weren't. By 9am I felt behind. And I hadn't even started my actual work yet.

Sound familiar?

I decided I was done letting my tools decide what my morning looked like. So I built something that reads everything first, then tells me what I actually need to pay attention to.

I call it my morning briefing agent. And once I set it up, I cannot imagine going back.

Here's the thing: you don't need to be technical to build this. If you've ever created a Zap, or even if you haven't, you can do this. I'm going to walk you through it, step by step.

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What This Actually Does

Every morning at 8am, before I open a single tab, an automated system:

What lands in my briefing:

→ Top priorities for the day (max 5. If everything's a priority, nothing is.) → Urgent items that need immediate attention → Things that can wait → Things I can safely ignore → Recommended next actions

That last category, things I can ignore, is the one that changed everything for me.

What You'll Need

Never used Zapier before? Think of it like a middleman that connects your apps and tells them to talk to each other automatically. You set the rules once, it runs on its own.

A Note on the API Key (Don't Skip This)

When you get to the Claude step, Zapier will ask for an API key. This is normal. Here's how to get it:

You'll need to add a credit card to your Anthropic account. Before you panic — this workflow costs cents per day. Think $1-2 a month at most. Worth it.

Step 1: Create Your Zap and Set the Trigger

Go to zapier.com and click Create Zap.

Search for Schedule by Zapier and select it as your trigger. Choose Every Day and set your time. I run mine at 8am — pick whatever lands before you normally start working.

Hit Continue. Zapier will confirm the trigger. Hit Continue again.

Step 2: Pull Your Inputs

Gmail (start here): Add a Zapier step: Gmail → Find Email. Set it to pull emails from the last 24 hours, or filter by unread. You can get specific with labels, senders, or subject lines, but for starters, keep it broad.

Step 2: Pull Your Gmail

Click the + to add a new step. Search for Gmail and select Find Email as the action.

Connect your Gmail account when prompted.

In the Search String field, type:

This tells Gmail to find all unread emails from the last 24 hours. If you want to cut out newsletter noise, use this instead:

Two settings to fix before you continue:

"Successful if no search results are found?" — change this to True. If you leave it as False, the whole Zap stops on a quiet morning. You don't want that.

"If multiple search results are found" — change this to Return all search results. Otherwise it only grabs one email.

Hit Continue then Test step. You should see sample email data come back.

Step 3: Pull Your Slack Mentions

Click + to add another step. Search for Slack and select Find Message as the action.

Watch out here: Zapier has multiple Slack actions and the wrong one is easy to pick. You want Find Message, not Get Message. "Get Message" asks for a specific message ID, which isn't what you need. If you accidentally add "Get Message", delete it and start this step over.

In the Search Query field, type:

Replace [yourSlackusername] with the name people use when they tag you in Slack.

Then update these settings:

Hit Continue then Test step.

You may see Count: 0 in the test results. That's fine. It just means no one mentioned you in the test window. The Zap won't fail on real mornings because you set "successful if no results" to True.

Step 4: The AI Prompt

Click + to add a new step. Search for Anthropic (Claude) and select Send Message as the action.

Connect your account using the API key you created earlier.

Now you'll see a User Message field. This is where the prompt goes — and where most people get confused, so I'm going to be very specific.

The User Message field takes both typed text and live data from your earlier steps. Here's how to fill it in:

Click inside the User Message field and paste this entire prompt:

Now, place your cursor at the end of the EMAIL DATA: line. Look for the small + button in the top right corner of the User Message box (not inside the text, on the outer edge of the field). Click it. A dropdown will appear showing your previous steps. Click Step 2 (Gmail) and select Body Plain.

Then place your cursor at the end of the SLACK DATA: line. Click that same + button again. This time select Step 3 (Slack) and choose Text.

Your User Message field should now show the prompt text with two small data pills embedded — one for Gmail content, one for Slack. That's exactly what you want.

If the Slack data pill shows "No data" — don't worry. That's just because the test found no mentions. It'll work fine when the Zap runs live.

For the Model field — select claude-3-5-haiku-20241022. It's the fastest and most cost-effective option for this use case.

Leave Memory Key blank and Show Advanced Options as False.

Hit Continue then Test step. If everything is connected correctly, you'll see Claude return a formatted briefing based on your sample email data.

Step 5: Send Your Briefing to Slack

Click + to add the final step. Search for Slack and select Send Channel Message.

Hit Continue then Test step. If it works, you'll see a message appear in your Slack channel.

Step 6: Publish

Click Publish in the top right corner of Zapier.

That's it. Your Zap is live. Tomorrow morning, before you open a single tab, your briefing will be waiting for you. 🎉

What It Looks Like When It's Working

You wake up. You make your coffee. You open Slack and there's a clean, organized message in your #daily-brief channel. Not 47 unread messages. Not three threads with no context. One list. What matters, what doesn't, and what to do about it.

You're not reacting to your tools anymore. You're reading a briefing and deciding where your attention goes.

That shift happens before 8:05am.

Start Simple, Build From There

If the Slack step feels like too much right now, skip Steps 3 and remove the SLACK DATA line from the prompt. Run the Gmail-only version first. Get a win. Add Slack when you're ready.

The goal isn't a perfect system on day one. It's getting one morning back. Then another. Then another.

Try it and let me know how it goes. Drop a comment or reply to the newsletter. I want to know what you built. 👇