Mar 31, 2026

How to Build an AI Reading List Agent

You come across an interesting article in your inbox, a PDF someone shared, a link from a Slack thread — and you think “I should save this.” Then it disappears into a bookmark folder you’ll never open, or stays buried in your email forever.

An AI reading list agent gives you a single address to forward anything to. It reads the article, saves the file to Google Drive, and adds a row to a Google Sheet with the title, source, summary, tags, and date. You end up with a searchable index of everything you’ve saved, without any manual organizing.

Mail

Fwd: Stripe's approach to API design 2 messages

You 8:15 AM

To: Carly

Good breakdown of how they version their APIs and handle breaking changes. --- Forwarded --- https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stripes-approach-to-api-design/

Reading List Agent 8:16 AM

To: You

Saved. Title: Stripe's Approach to API Design Source: The Pragmatic Engineer Summary: How Stripe handles API versioning, backward compatibility, and breaking changes at scale. Covers their version-header system, automated compatibility checks, and internal tooling for managing hundreds of API versions simultaneously. Tags: API design, engineering, Stripe, developer tooling Filed in Google Drive under /Reading List/Engineering. Added to your reading list spreadsheet.

Forward an article, get a confirmation with a clean summary. Everything is filed and indexed.

It works the same with PDFs and attachments:

Mail

Fwd: McKinsey AI adoption report 2 messages

You 2:30 PM

To: Carly

Got this from a colleague. Worth keeping. [Attached: McKinsey-State-of-AI-2026.pdf]

Reading List Agent 2:31 PM

To: You

Saved. Title: The State of AI in 2026 -- McKinsey Global Survey Source: McKinsey & Company Summary: Annual survey of 1,800 organizations on AI adoption. Key findings: 72% now using AI in at least one business function (up from 55% last year), generative AI spending doubled, but only 28% report measurable ROI. Biggest barriers remain data quality and talent. Tags: AI, industry report, McKinsey, enterprise adoption PDF saved to Google Drive under /Reading List/Reports. Added to your reading list spreadsheet.

The agent reads the PDF, writes a summary, files it in the right Drive folder, and logs everything in your spreadsheet.

How it works

Create a reading list agent at dashboard.carlyassistant.com (or email carly@usecarly.com and describe what you need). Connect your Google Drive and Google Sheet (or Notion, Airtable, or whatever you use to organize). Tell the agent your folder structure and what columns you want — title, source, summary, tags, date, and any custom fields. It starts processing forwarded emails immediately, and learns your tagging preferences and folder logic over time. Full setup walkthrough: How to Create a Custom AI Email Agent.

What an AI reading list agent connects to

Email: Gmail, Outlook

File Storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, SharePoint

Spreadsheets & Databases: Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, Microsoft Excel

Notes: Notion, Mem, Outline

See the full list of integrations.

What an AI reading list agent can do

Forward an article link — agent fetches the article, reads it, writes a 2-3 sentence summary, auto-tags it by topic, saves a copy to Google Drive, and adds a row to your spreadsheet with title, source, summary, tags, and date
Forward a PDF attachment — agent reads the PDF, generates a summary, files it in the right Drive folder based on content type, and logs it in your sheet
Weekly reading digest — agent reviews everything you saved that week and sends you a summary email on Friday with your saved articles grouped by topic, so you can catch up on what you flagged but haven’t read yet

Build your reading list agent in under 10 minutes at dashboard.carlyassistant.com, or email carly@usecarly.com and describe the agent you need.