Daily Rundown
Runtime skill — a playbook the deployed @context agent runs for its owner, invoked in natural language. Not a coding-agent workflow; those live in .agents/skills/.
A focused today brief: one glanceable surface instead of five apps. It folds
in the inbound queue, the CRM, the real calendar, the inbox, and Slack — each
source only when it's connected — and stitches them into one short digest.
Read-only assembly: it pulls and formats, it never files or sends anything.
The whole value is one surface, so stay ruthless about signal. Surface what
needs the owner's eyes today, not a mirror of every inbox and channel.
Procedure
Keep it cheap, and fire it once. Each source is a sub-agent call under its own
time budget, and they all share one model — so keep the fan-out small and issue it
in a single concurrent batch: put the backbone and best-effort tool calls in one
message, all at once, so the brief's wall-clock is the slowest source, not the sum.
One tight retrieval per source, no exploratory follow-ups, never retry a source.
Don't run the sources in separate turns one after another — that serializes their
budgets and is the slow path.
The backbone (the two fast local sources below) always runs and carries the brief on
its own; the best-effort sources get skipped the moment they're slow, error, or come
back empty (see the skip rule). A complete-but-fast brief beats a perfect one that hangs.
- Anchor on now, in the owner's zone. Read the current datetime from your
context — it carries the owner's timezone, with the zone label shown (e.g.
PDT). "Today" is now → end of that local day, and every due/overdue/"today"
judgment is made in that zone, not UTC. Render each time with its zone label so
nothing is ambiguous. If the owner asks for a different zone ("rundown in GMT"),
frame and render the whole brief in that zone instead. Don't auto-detect travel:
the configured zone (or the one they ask for) is the source of truth.
Backbone — always run these two (fast, local):
-
Inbound queue — call rundown. It surfaces updates others marked done
that the owner hasn't acknowledged, and the owner's own reminders the hourly
sweep filed in once they fell due. (It marks what it shows as briefed — that
is the point of a morning brief; un-acknowledged items still resurface
tomorrow.) If it returns nothing, drop the section.
-
Calendar + due work — call query_crm (one retrieval, ask for both). Pass
today's local date (read it from your context, in the owner's zone) in the
question so the CRM doesn't have to derive it:
- Meetings whose
starts_at is today (the owner's local day).
- Reminders that are
pending and due today, plus anything overdue
(due_at < now, still pending).
If this read times out or errors, note "CRM skipped" in the close and move on —
do not call query_crm again. A retry only burns budget and the queue still
carries the brief.
Best-effort add-ons — one call each, only if the source is connected; skip on any trouble:
- Calendar (
calendar connected): query_calendar for today's events; merge
with the CRM meetings (dedupe by title + start time; the calendar wins on times).
- Inbox (
gmail connected): query_gmail for the handful that actually need
the owner — unread and important, or addressed to them and awaiting a reply, from
today. Ask the sub-agent for that tight selection; never pull the whole inbox.
- Slack (
slack connected): query_slack for threads/DMs that mention the
owner or look like they're waiting on a reply. "Needs your eyes," not an unread dump.
- Order each list by its time column, ascending.
Skip rule (add-ons only). If an add-on source returns an error, a skipped /
unavailable note, or is plainly slow, drop its section, note it in one line at
the end (e.g. "Slack skipped — slow"), and move on. Do not retry it and never let
one source hold up the brief. The backbone (queue + CRM) always stands on its own.
De-dup — one item, one line. The queue and the other sources overlap; prefer
the queue copy and don't repeat:
- A reminder the sweep already filed into the queue (it shows under Awaiting
you) is the same follow-up
query_crm returns as due/overdue. Show it once,
under Awaiting you — don't also list it under Overdue / Today.
- A Slack @-mention that a teammate already left via the queue shouldn't
reappear under Slack. Prefer the queue copy.
Format
Lead in this order, dropping any empty section. Render every clock time with its
zone label (e.g. 9:30 AM PDT), in the owner's local zone (or the one they asked
for):
- Awaiting you — the
rundown items, one line each (who / what).
- Overdue — past-due pending reminders not already shown above, with how late.
- Today — meetings (with start time) and reminders due today, time-ordered.
- Inbox — the emails worth seeing (sender · subject · the one-line why), from
gmail when connected.
- Slack — threads/DMs needing a look (channel or DM · who · the ask), from
slack when connected.
Close with a one-line tally, e.g. 2 awaiting · 1 overdue · 4 today · 3 inbox · 2 slack.
Edge cases
- Quiet day: if every section is empty, say so in one line ("Nothing waiting on
you and nothing on the calendar today.") — don't pad it.
- A disconnected source just vanishes. No
gmail / slack / calendar →
drop its section silently; never error or apologize for it.
- Cite the sources you used (the queue via
rundown, meetings/reminders via
crm, events via calendar, mail via gmail, threads via slack — each when
connected). Report empties honestly; never invent items.