What they built
A Daily Command Center - a personal AI automation that runs each morning to surface the highest-priority work for the day, grounded in actual goals, communications, and calendar commitments.
- Triggered by typing "Let's go" in Claude
- Reads a shared skill file that instructs Claude what to do
- Pulls live data from Gmail, Slack, Google Calendar, and a performance/goal tool (Small Improvements at Zapier)
- Outputs a structured daily brief: today's commitments, urgent to-dos, goal-aligned priorities, and draft replies to key messages
- Designed to be run individually by every team member using the same shared skill file
Why they built it
- Emily's mornings were consumed by reactive triage - opening dozens of tabs, responding to whatever was loudest, and reaching lunch without touching the most important work
- HR teams are disproportionately affected: they're in every channel, fielding escalations, DMs, and ad-hoc calendar blocks constantly
- Goals lived in a separate tool (Small Improvements) that no one checked daily - meaning strategic priorities were invisible during day-to-day work
- Wanted a way to reconnect daily work to agreed team goals without manual effort
Tools used
- Claude (AI chat interface - also works with ChatGPT, Copilot, or Cursor)
- Zapier MCP (connects Claude to external apps; acts like a USB hub for AI tools)
- Gmail - read, draft, label emails
- Slack - read DMs, find messages, post to channels
- Google Calendar - read daily commitments
- Google Drive / Docs - access documents
- Small Improvements - read goals, 1:1s, and performance feedback
- (For recruiting teams: Ashby ATS, BambooHR HRIS, Bright Hire)
How you could build this yourself
- Choose your AI interface - Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, or Cursor all work; pick whichever your team already uses.
- Set up Zapier MCP - connect it to the apps your team uses daily (email, Slack, calendar, your HRIS, your goal-setting tool, your ATS if relevant). Zapier has 9,000+ app integrations.
- Identify your data sources - decide which apps hold your goals, your communications, and your calendar. These become the inputs Claude reads each morning.
- Write a skill file - a plain-text instruction set that tells Claude exactly what to do when triggered. At minimum, include:
- Check calendar for today's commitments
- Scan Gmail and Slack for urgent items due today
- Read current goals from your performance/goal tool
- Cross-reference today's activity against those goals
- Surface the highest-priority action and offer to draft replies
- Share the skill file with your team - each person runs it from their own AI interface each morning. Same skill, individual context, consistent practice.
- Test it personally first - type your trigger phrase (e.g. "Let's go"), step away, and return to your brief. Refine the skill file based on what's missing or noisy.
- Adapt for your team's stack - swap Small Improvements for Lattice, 15Five, or Notion; swap Ashby for Greenhouse; the logic stays the same.
- Scale to the team - once you feel the value personally, roll out the skill file as a team standard so managers can trust everyone is checking work against shared goals daily.
Source
Built and presented by Emily Mabie, Senior AI Automation Engineer at Zapier, as part of an Open Org "Shipped by HR" session on building a Daily Command Center for HR at Zapier.