Kairos
I built my own AI executive assistant, and taught it when to stay quiet
- AI agents
- Automation
- Systems design
Most productivity apps fail me the same way: they start loud, I start ignoring them, and a month later they're gone. So I built my own assistant instead, on Claude, and designed it around one idea.
01 The idea: the right moment
Kairos is the Greek word for the right moment, as opposed to chronos, clock time. Kairos doesn't fill my day with reminders on a schedule. It speaks up when something is at stake (a deadline, a follow-up that's due, an email from a real person) and stays quiet the rest of the time.
02 How it works
It runs on my Mac and on a small server, so I can text it on Telegram from anywhere. Both share one memory: plain text files, synced through git, that hold what's going on this week, open loops, decisions and what works with me.
It's connected to the tools I already use: Gmail, Google Calendar, Todoist, Google Drive and Apple Health. Routine jobs run through small Python scripts, so the AI only does the parts that need judgment.
03 Client work
Finding clients: a script audits local business websites for the things owners actually feel (no site at all, not mobile-friendly, no way to book or get in touch) and ranks them, so outreach starts with the businesses I can help most. Its first run covered 117 businesses in the Old St. Vital BIZ.
Doing the work: I build client sites with Claude Code the same way I built Kairos, which is how the Spa Ojas site came together. Kairos drafts client messages and case studies in my voice, and I edit and send every one myself.
04 Training and food
Logging from a text: I send "ate: 3 eggs, toast" or "pull day done" and it logs it and replies with the day's total against my target. A morning weigh-in gets a short brief back: the trend, the day's shape and today's workout.
Readiness: each morning it checks last night's sleep, heart rate variability and resting heart rate from my Apple Watch against my normal, plus yesterday's load. If something's off, the workout gets lighter or moves, and if everything's fine it says nothing.
My week: it plans focus blocks and workouts around when I actually wake up, never over class or other fixed events.
05 The marketing decisions
Fewer messages, not more. At most two nudges a day, three hours apart. Every nudge goes in a ledger with how I reacted, and any kind I ignore three times gets dropped. It's the same thing I'd do with a client's email list: if people stop opening it, change it.
A voice guide. Kairos has written rules for how to sound: short, specific, never the same message shape twice. Generic reminders are exactly what I learned to ignore.
06 What it taught me about AI
AI does the volume. I bring the taste. Kairos can draft ten versions in the time it takes me to write one, but deciding what's true, what to keep and what to cut is still my job. That's how I use AI in marketing work too: faster drafts and research, with every piece reviewed before it goes out.