Getting Started
Set Up an AI Assistant for Your Inbox and CRM
Every question people ask when they first set up Carly, answered in one walkthrough: connecting Gmail and your calendar, giving the agent access to your inbox, renaming it or running it on your own company domain, teaching it how you actually like to work, building workflows that handle repeat work, and wiring it into whatever CRM you already use. The part most people miss is the difference between preferences and workflows. Preferences are timeless feedback the agent sees in every single prompt: your working hours, how you want meeting times proposed, the shorthand you use for your own accounts. Workflows are repeat work, an automation that fires every time an email lands. Put repeat work in your preferences and it will not run, and that one distinction is why some people end up with a genuinely useful assistant and other people end up with a chatbot. You also see the auto-label workflow running on a real inbox, sorting spam and promotional mail before it reaches the primary tab and doing a noticeably better job than the built-in routing rules in Gmail and Outlook. The workflow editor is open on screen, so you can watch the reasoning step send the email to an LLM with a classification prompt, preview exactly how any message would be labeled and why, then correct it by editing the prompt in plain English or just asking Carly to fix it.
Step by step
- 01
Connect your email and calendar
Start by linking the accounts the agent will work from. Gmail or Outlook plus your calendar is enough to make everything that follows possible.
- 02
Give Carly access to your inbox
Inbox access is what lets the agent read context instead of guessing. Without it, it can only act on what you paste into a message.
- 03
Email Carly like a colleague
There is no separate app to learn. You write to Carly the way you would write to a coworker, and cc it on threads where you want it to act.
- 04
Rename it or use your own domain
The assistant does not have to be called Carly, and it does not have to send from a Carly address. Run it on your own company domain so it reads as part of your team.
- 05
Add your other calendars
Most people have more than one. Connect the rest and turn on Calendar Sync so availability reflects everything you actually have booked.
- 06
Set preferences so it works your way
Preferences are timeless feedback the agent sees in every prompt: working hours, tone, the shorthand you use for your own accounts, how you want meeting times proposed.
- 07
Know what belongs in a workflow instead
This is the distinction most people get wrong. Preferences shape behavior; workflows do repeat work on a trigger. Put repeat work in preferences and it will simply never run.
- 08
Build a workflow for the busy work
Set up an automation that fires every time an email lands. The auto-label workflow shown here sorts spam and promotional mail before it reaches the primary tab.
- 09
Open the editor and preview a classification
Inside the workflow editor, the reasoning step sends the email to an LLM with a classification prompt. Preview how any message would be labeled and why before you trust it.
- 10
Fix a wrong label in plain English
If it classifies something incorrectly, edit the prompt in ordinary language or tell Carly what went wrong and let it update the workflow for you.
- 11
Connect the CRM you already run
Carly has an internal CRM, but it also connects to yours. Check the third-party integrations list first, since most of the common ones are already there.
- 12
Reach any other CRM through MCP
If yours is not on the list, most CRMs now expose an MCP server, which is how AI agents talk to outside tools. Paste the URL, connect, and the agent can read and write to it.
- 13
Tell it which CRM you mean
Once more than one is connected, name the CRM in your request. It saves the agent a guess and keeps updates landing in the right system.
Ready to automate your busywork?
Carly schedules, researches, and briefs you—so you can focus on what matters.
See what people say
"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."