Daily Briefing & Morning Digest

Automate a morning summary: calendar, email, tasks, weather

This use case walks you through a daily briefing or morning digest: one automated message (or voice call) each morning with your calendar, important email, tasks, and optional weather or news. You can receive it in a channel (Telegram, Slack, etc.) or as a phone call. Plan for about 20 minutes.

What You Will Get

One cron job that runs at a set time (e.g. 9 AM)
A briefing that pulls from calendar, email, and tasks (if you have those skills)
Delivery to your preferred channel or by voice
Easy customization (what to include, when it runs)

Prerequisites

OpenClaw installed and running — Getting Started
At least one channel connected — Channel Setup (Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, etc.)
Optional but recommended: Calendar skill (e.g. CalDAV, Google), Gmail/email skill, Todoist or task skill — so the agent can actually read your calendar and email. See Calendar, Email, Task Automation.

Step 1: Choose What to Include

Decide what your briefing should contain. Examples:

Today’s calendar events (next 12–24 hours)
Unread or important email summary
Tasks due today or overdue
Weather (if you have a weather skill)
One-line news or RSS digest (if you use an RSS skill)

You will phrase this as a single message the agent runs on a schedule.

Step 2: Add a Cron Job

In your OpenClaw config (e.g. ~/.clawdbot/moltbot.json), add a cron job. Example: every day at 9 AM.

Daily briefing at 9 AM

{
  "cron": {
    "jobs": [
      {
        "schedule": "0 9 * * *",
        "command": "agent --message 'Create my daily briefing for today. Include: 1) Calendar events in the next 12 hours, 2) Summary of unread important emails, 3) Tasks due today or overdue. Keep it concise; send only what I need to know.'"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Adjust the message to match the skills you have (e.g. if no calendar, omit calendar). Cron format: minute hour day month weekday. See Setting Up Automation for more schedules.

Step 3: Restart and Test

Restart the Gateway so it loads the new cron. Test without waiting until 9 AM by running the same command manually:

Test briefing

openclaw agent --message 'Create my daily briefing for today. Include: calendar next 12h, important emails, tasks due today. Concise.'

Check your channel for the reply. If the agent does not have access to calendar or email, install and configure the right skills first (Skills, Calendar, Email).

Step 4: Optional — Voice Briefing

To have OpenClaw call you with the briefing instead of (or in addition to) sending a message, use Have OpenClaw call you: ElevenLabs + Twilio + a cron that triggers the call with the same briefing prompt. Great for a true “morning call” experience.