Advanced & Troubleshooting
Carly AI Can Hit Any API: 5 Prompts to Try
One of Carly's most underrated abilities is pulling live, real-time data by calling APIs. For public data you don't need a key at all: you describe what you want and Carly finds and wires up the right API itself. For private systems, you save a key once under Tools → Custom API Keys and then refer to the service by name in your email. The video runs five examples end to end: a Congress stock tracker, a should-I-actually-move-here neighborhood check, a restaurant violation decoder, a media bias mirror, and a live plane spotter. The takeaway isn't the specific demos so much as the prompt pattern behind them: name the source specifically, say what shape you want back, ask for a verdict rather than a data dump, and put it on a schedule so the answer arrives before you think to ask.
Step by step
- 01
For public data, skip the setup entirely
You don't need an API key for public sources. Describe what you want in plain English and Carly finds the right API and wires it up on its own. That covers a large amount of government, weather, transit, and open-data material.
- 02
For private systems, save a key once
Go to Tools → Custom API Keys and save the key. From then on your agent can hit that service on your behalf, and you just refer to it by name in your email, with no re-authentication each time.
- 03
Watch the five demos
The video runs through a Congress Stock Tracker, Should I Actually Move Here, Restaurant Violation Decoder, The Media Bias Mirror, and Live Plane Spotter: five different public data sources, all reached the same way.
- 04
Name the source specifically
A ZIP code, a ticker, a VIN, a named restaurant. Vague asks get vague data, and this is the single biggest difference between a prompt that works and one that returns something generic.
- 05
Ask for a verdict, not a data dump
Say what shape you want back (a ranked list, a comparison, a specific number of items), and then ask for the judgment. "Give me the blunt version" is what turns raw numbers into something you can act on.
- 06
Put it on a schedule
Any of these can run recurring. A weekly digest that builds itself and lands in your inbox before you open it is worth more than the same query run manually when you happen to remember.
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