Executive Assistant Agent
Diary, inbox and briefing notes handled, without hiring an assistant.
What is executive assistant?
An executive assistant agent arranges meetings across calendars, protects the time you want kept free, sorts your inbox by what genuinely matters, and prepares a short brief before each meeting covering who you are seeing and what is outstanding.
Senior people lose hours weekly to scheduling and inbox triage. Both are necessary, neither requires seniority, and the cost of doing them at a director salary is rarely calculated.
The scheduling problem is not sending the invitation. It is the four exchanges required to find a slot that suits three people, none of whom control their own diary fully.
An agent handles the negotiation, defends the blocks you want kept free, sorts your inbox so the important messages sit at the top, and produces a short brief before each meeting so you arrive knowing what happened last time.
Why the agent does not accept meetings
Duara deploys assistant agents from Nairobi for directors and senior managers who do not have a personal assistant and spend more time on diary administration than they would admit.
We are cautious about giving an agent authority to accept meetings on your behalf. It is technically straightforward and frequently regretted, because a diary filled by rules rather than judgement produces weeks that look efficient and achieve nothing.
Who this is for
- Your diary is arranged over long email chains
- Important messages get buried
- You walk into meetings without context
- You have no assistant and will not hire one
Industries we serve
- Professional services
- Financial services
- Property development
- Manufacturing leadership
- Public sector executives
- Technology firms
Problems this solves
These are the specific losses that make an assistant agent worth having rather than another tool to check.
- Scheduling by email chain. Finding a slot that suits three people takes four exchanges, none of which required your judgement.
- Focus time never protected. Blocks reserved for actual work are the first thing given away, because nothing defends them.
- Meetings entered cold. You arrive without recalling what was agreed last time, so the first ten minutes reconstruct it.
- Important messages buried. The message that mattered sat beneath forty routine ones and surfaced two days late.
What we deliver
Meeting negotiation handled across calendars, protected time defended, inbox sorted by genuine importance, and a short brief prepared before each meeting.
Meetings arranged across multiple calendars
Focus time protected in your diary
Inbox sorted by what actually matters
A short brief before each meeting
Outstanding actions tracked between meetings
Rules controlling who can book you and when
Features
- Negotiation, not just invitations. The agent finds a slot that works across several diaries rather than proposing one and waiting.
- Protected time defended. Blocks you want kept free are treated as commitments rather than as availability nobody has claimed yet.
- Briefs before meetings. Who you are seeing, what was agreed last time, and what is outstanding, in a few lines rather than a document.
- Booking rules you set. Who may book you, when, and for how long, so the diary reflects your priorities rather than other people urgency.
- Proposals rather than acceptances. By default it proposes and you confirm, because a diary filled by rules produces busy weeks that achieve nothing.
Benefits
- Hours returned weekly. Scheduling and triage are the largest recoverable time cost for most senior people and neither needs their judgement.
- Focus time survives. Blocks defended by something other than willpower actually remain in the diary.
- Meetings start further along. Arriving with context removes the reconstruction that opens most recurring meetings.
- Fewer things missed. Inbox sorting by genuine importance means the message that mattered surfaces the same day.
Technologies we use
- Calendar negotiation. Finding mutually available slots across several diaries, including external attendees where they share availability.
- Importance modelling. Sorting the inbox by what you have historically acted on rather than by sender or subject rules.
- Meeting brief assembly. Pulling prior notes, outstanding actions and recent correspondence into a short pre-meeting summary.
- Booking policy enforcement. Rules on who may book, when and for how long, applied before a proposal is made.
- Action tracking. Carrying outstanding items between meetings so they are visible rather than remembered.
Judgement about what matters is the hard part. Sorting by sender or subject is easy and mostly useless; sorting by what you would actually want to see requires tuning against your own behaviour.
How the process works, step by step
An assistant agent usually becomes useful within three to four weeks, with inbox tuning continuing for a month afterwards.
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Step 1
Free time review
We establish where your week actually goes, which is usually different from where you believe it goes.
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Step 2
Booking rules agreed
Who may book you, when, and what time you want defended, recorded explicitly.
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Step 3
Calendar first
Scheduling goes live before inbox work, because it produces recoverable time immediately and carries less risk.
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Step 4
Inbox tuning
Importance sorting is trained against what you actually open and act on, which takes a few weeks of correction.
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Step 5
Briefs added
Pre-meeting summaries begin once the agent has enough history to assemble something genuinely useful.
Quality assurance and how we work
The commitments attached to an agent with access to your diary and correspondence.
- It proposes rather than accepts by default. Automatic acceptance is available but we advise against it, because a diary filled by rules produces weeks that look efficient and achieve nothing.
- Protected time is genuinely protected. Blocks you reserve are defended rather than offered as availability when somebody asks.
- Access is limited to your account. The agent works with your calendar and mailbox only, not with those of colleagues.
- Importance is tuned, not assumed. Sorting is trained against what you actually act on rather than shipped as a default that flatters obvious senders.
- Correspondence is never used for training. Your mail and diary stay within your systems and no public model sees them.
Frequently asked questions about executive assistant
Can it accept meetings on our behalf?
It can, within rules you set, but we advise against it. A diary filled by rules rather than judgement produces weeks that look efficient and achieve nothing.
How does it protect focus time?
Reserved blocks are treated as commitments rather than as unclaimed availability, so they are not offered when somebody asks for a slot.
Does it read all our email?
It processes your mailbox to sort it. Access is limited to your own account and nothing is used to train public AI models.
How does it decide what is important?
It is tuned against what you actually open and act on, rather than shipped with rules that simply favour senior senders.
How long does tuning take?
Scheduling is useful within three to four weeks. Inbox importance takes about a month of correction to become genuinely reliable.
What is in a meeting brief?
Who you are seeing, what was agreed last time and what remains outstanding, in a few lines rather than a document nobody reads.
Can it schedule with external people?
Yes, and it handles the negotiation, though external availability depends on what the other party shares.
Why does scheduling go live first?
It recovers time immediately and carries less risk than inbox handling, so it proves the value while tuning continues.
Can it decline meetings?
It can propose declining based on your rules, but the decision stays with you unless you specifically delegate it.
Does it work with Outlook and Google?
Yes, both, and it can negotiate across attendees using different platforms.
Will it move meetings without asking?
No. Rescheduling is proposed rather than executed, because a moved meeting affects other people diaries too.
Can several executives share one agent?
Each has their own, because importance modelling and booking rules are personal and do not transfer usefully.
Does it track action items?
Yes, carried between meetings so outstanding items are visible rather than depending on somebody remembering.
What if it sorts something wrongly?
You correct it and the sorting adjusts. Early corrections are what make the importance model useful.
Is this a replacement for a personal assistant?
For diary and inbox work, largely. For judgement, relationships and discretion, no, and we would not claim otherwise.
Can it draft replies?
Yes, for routine correspondence, held as drafts for you rather than sent.
Does it handle travel booking?
Not directly. It can hold the diary implications of travel but booking itself sits outside what we set up here.
What happens when you are on leave?
Booking rules can change automatically for the period, so the diary is not filled while you are away.
Is our correspondence confidential?
Yes. It stays in your systems, is not exported, and is never used to train public models.
What does an assistant agent cost?
Message and meeting volume set it, quoted against your own diary and mailbox figures before anything is agreed.
Glossary of terms
Terms used around this agent.
- Focus time
- Diary blocks reserved for actual work rather than meetings, which need defending to survive.
- Triage
- Sorting incoming messages so the important ones surface first.
- Meeting brief
- A short summary before a meeting covering who, what was agreed previously and what is outstanding.
- Booking policy
- The rules governing who may put a meeting in your diary, when and for how long.
- Scheduling negotiation
- The back and forth required to find a time that suits everybody invited.
- Action item
- Something agreed in a meeting that somebody must do, tracked until it is done.
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Add up the meetings in your last month that took more than two emails to arrange. That figure is what this recovers first.
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