Admin Copilot Setup

Admin Copilot Setup

Stand up a proactive admin assistant in one guided pass, then get out of the way. Four pillars, each independently optional:

1. Morning digest — calendar + inbox triage + competitor deltas + follow-ups.
2. Inbox triage — ongoing (delegated to inbox-management; never auto-sends). Starts propose-then-confirm; the user can opt into automatic archiving of known-safe noise at setup or graduate to it later.
3. Calendar prep — surfaced inside the digest: meeting prep, gaps, conflicts, focus-block holds, and declines for meetings the user routinely skips. Reversible moves (focus holds on the user's own calendar) can graduate to automatic; anything others see — declines, reschedules — stays propose-only.
4. Weekly competitor brief — only what materially changed (competitor-brief).

All preferences persist via the admin_copilot_prefs tool from the included admin-copilot-prefs skill — call it through skill_execute — which owns the storage location; never write the prefs file by hand. Proactive jobs are real schedules created with schedule_create — nothing fires at startup; everything is created here, with the user present.

Posture: lead with the safe default. The assistant pre-sorts noise and proposes actions; the user stays in control. Say this out loud during setup so expectations are set before anything runs.

Step 0 — Frame and scope

State the four pillars in one breath, note the propose-then-confirm posture, and ask which the user wants. Don't assume all four. Let them start with one.

Step 1 — Connect accounts

The copilot reuses the user's existing connections; it does not own credentials. For any pillar that needs it:

• Email / calendar not connected yet → run the relevant connector (vellum-oauth-integrations, gmail, google-calendar / outlook-calendar).
• If already connected, skip — don't re-auth.

Step 2 — Capture preferences

Confirm the user's timezone first (see time-based-actions → timezone confidence check) so cron fires in their local time.

Persist choices with the admin_copilot_prefs tool (via skill_execute), action set_prefs, passing a prefs_patch. This tool is the only supported way to write preferences. The prefs_patch shape:

{
  "digest":          { "enabled": true, "cron": "0 7 * * 1-5", "timezone": "America/New_York", "channel": "in-app" },
  "inbox":           { "delegateToInboxManagement": true, "stage": "flag-only" },
  "competitorBrief": { "enabled": true, "cron": "0 8 * * 1", "channel": "in-app" }
}

• Digest time: ask; default 7:00am weekdays (0 7 * * 1-5).

• Delivery channel per pillar: in-app, slack, or email. Default in-app.

• Inbox stage: default flag-only (propose-then-confirm — nothing is archived; the assistant only surfaces what it would do). Offer the user a higher start if they want noise cleared from day one:

  • standard — silent archive of known-safe categories only (calendar responses, no-reply senders, newsletters), always cross-checked against the safe-list; everything else stays flagged.
  • autonomous — the above plus cold outreach archived by judgment.

  Walk through inbox-management's informed-consent framing for whichever stage they pick, and require an explicit, informed choice before setting anything above flag-only — don't infer it from enthusiasm.

For competitor tracking, add each competitor with admin_copilot_prefs add_competitor (name, plus domain, watch_urls, keywords when known).

Do not hunt for the prefs file. It lives at an internal path the tool manages — not model-discoverable by design. Searching the filesystem for it, reading it, or writing it by hand will not work. Always go through admin_copilot_prefs.

If skill_execute reports admin_copilot_prefs as unknown or not allowed, the admin-copilot-prefs skill has not projected into this session — set_prefs will not become reachable by exploring. Do not improvise a file write or search for a storage directory. Load the skill explicitly (skill_load with skill: "admin-copilot-prefs") and retry once. If it still fails, tell the user: "The admin-copilot state tool isn't loading — restart the assistant, then ask me to set up your admin copilot again." Then create whatever schedules the user enabled (Step 3) with default preferences so the digest still fires, and stop. Do not loop.

Step 3 — Wire the proactive jobs

Create a schedule only for the pillars the user enabled, with schedule_create.

Morning digest (if digest.enabled):

• expression: the chosen digest.cron; syntax: "cron"; timezone: theirs.
• mode: "execute"
• message: "Load the admin-digest skill and produce today's chief-of-staff briefing, then deliver it on the configured channel."
• reuse_conversation: true
• inference_profile: a capable profile (digest quality matters) — omit to use the default if unsure.
• routing_intent: match the chosen channel (e.g. single_channel).

Weekly competitor brief (if competitorBrief.enabled):

• expression: the chosen competitorBrief.cron (default 0 8 * * 1, Mon 8am); syntax: "cron"; timezone: theirs.
• mode: "execute"
• message: "Load the competitor-brief skill and produce this week's competitor brief, then deliver it on the configured channel."
• reuse_conversation: true

Inbox triage (if the user wants it): do not create the schedule yourself. Run inbox-management setup, which creates its own recurring schedule (0 */3 * * 1-5, execute, reuse) and owns the trust ladder. Pass the stage the user chose in Step 2 — inbox-management accepts a caller-chosen starting stage (map flag-only→0, standard→1, autonomous→2) and runs its consent framing for that stage. If the user wants urgent items caught sooner, tighten that triage cadence (e.g. hourly on weekdays).

schedule_create runs as a guardian action. Setup is a guardian flow, so this is expected; if a non-guardian context somehow reaches here, scheduling will be refused — tell the user setup must run from their own (guardian) session.

Step 4 — Confirm

Summarize what's now live: which jobs, when they fire, where output lands, and the inbox stage that's in effect (and, if standard/autonomous, exactly which categories will be archived silently). Tell them how to change it: "ask me to update your admin copilot" (re-runs this skill → set_prefs), or "graduate me" to move up the inbox trust ladder. Note that they don't have to ask — the digest learns from which proposals they approve and will offer to graduate a category once it has earned it (and back off from anything they reject). Done — the copilot now works in the background.