The Daily Briefing Setup | Field Notes

Wake up to a briefing, not five different apps.

One Slack message, already waiting. Calendar, urgent emails, weather, broken builds. One glance, full picture, done.

What Goes in It

Start with what you actually check every morning:

Calendar — Today's meetings with times and video links
Email highlights — Unread count + flagged/urgent threads
Weather — Temperature and conditions
CI/CD status — Any red builds overnight?
Reminders — Things you told the agent to surface today

Add stock prices, fitness goals, PR counts — whatever you'd manually check, automated into one summary.

Setting Up the Cron

OpenClaw has built-in cron scheduling. Mine fires at 7:30 AM on weekdays:

openclaw cron add \
  --schedule "30 7 * * 1-5" \
  --prompt "Send my daily briefing to Slack" \
  --channel slack

Want to be explicit? Spell it out:

--prompt "Check calendar, count unread emails, 
get weather for Vancouver, check GitHub Actions, 
send summary to Slack"

Route it to Slack, Discord, email — wherever your agent can reach.

Example Format

☀️ Good morning! Here's your Wednesday briefing:

📅 **Calendar**
• 10:00 — Standup (Zoom)
• 14:30 — Client call (Google Meet)

📧 **Email**
• 3 unread (1 flagged from Alex re: contract)

🌤️ **Weather**
• 18°C, partly cloudy, no rain

🔧 **CI/CD**
• All builds green ✓

📌 **Reminders**
• Follow up with vendor on pricing

Emoji headers for scanning. Only the essentials. Quiet sections stay short.

Customization Ideas

Day-specific schedules — Lighter weekends (weather + reminders only), heavier Mondays
Conditional sections — Only show CI/CD if something's red
Time-zone aware — "8 AM local time, wherever I am"
Evening wind-down — "What's tomorrow? Any loose ends?"

Why It Works

It's not about saving ten minutes. It's about starting with clarity instead of scramble.

The agent did the legwork while you slept. Set it up once, tweak over a few days, then forget about it. Five apps before coffee? Never again.