A build guide in five jobs
Build an open-source AI chief of staff from your job list
Hand it an outcome, AI agents run it 24/7
An AI chief of staff is a set of agents that do your weekly jobs: the standup, the metrics report, the meeting notes. Write the jobs down first, then build them as files in one repo. Kortix is the open-source CompanyOS: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector in one git repo you own.
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kortix.yaml
default_agent: kortixproject: name: arcadia description: Arcadia runs engineering, marketing and sales on Kortix.connectors: - slug: githubApproval gates you set. Off until you set them.
Three jobs, three files.
Each panel is a real setup from a Kortix use case, in the words of the page that documents it.
Set up a weekly metrics report agent in this project. 1. Create the agent agents/weekly-report.md. Its job is to build the weekly metrics report from Postgres and post it to Slack. It may use the PostgreSQL connector, read-only. 2. Create the skill skills/weekly-metrics-report/SKILL.md with these rules: - Report exactly the metrics defined in memory/weekly-report.md. If a definition is missing, state the assumption in the report.- Query this week from Monday 00:00 and the prior 4 weeks for comparison, with SELECT only.It reads each team member's recent Linear issues and GitHub activity, builds a short per-person summary, checks who has nothing recorded, and posts the standup to a Slack channel.When a call ends, it spawns its own isolated session — a cloud sandbox — with scoped access to what note-taking needs: the event, the transcript, and Linear. It writes structured notes, pulls out the action items, and files each one as a ticket assigned to the person who owns it.The job list comes first
Most build logs start with the source layer. Which database, which API, where the context lives. That order is why the build stalls. A chief of staff is a short list of jobs that repeat on a calendar, and each one has a known input, a known output, and a person who reads the output.
Write the list first. Five jobs are enough to start.
Write the five jobs down
Open last week's calendar and your sent mail. List every job you did twice. For most teams the list looks like this:
- The Monday metrics report
- The daily standup summary
- Meeting notes and the action items that follow
- Inbox triage
- The investor or board update
Each line needs three things before it is buildable: where the input lives, what the finished output looks like, and who reads it. "Weekly report" is not a job. "Query the metrics tables every Monday, write two sentences on what moved, post to #metrics" is a job.
The job description is the work. The files are the easy part.
Turn each job into a file
On Kortix a job becomes an agent file, a skill, and a trigger. The agent file holds the prompt. The skill holds the rules the job follows, in the words your team already uses. The trigger says when it runs.
The weekly report setup is a good template because it is short. It asks for one agent file, one skill, and one cron line, then opens a change request. The first two steps are the ones to copy into your own project.
The connectors are already there
The build logs treat connectors as the hard part. On Kortix a connector is a line in the config: 3,000+ apps in a click, plus MCP, OpenAPI, Postman, GraphQL and raw HTTP.
A kortix.yaml connector is a slug and a provider. The rest of the file is the agent, the skills it can use, and the trigger that starts it.
What a person still approves
A schedule, a webhook or an event in another app starts a session with nobody at the keyboard. That is the part that makes a chief of staff useful, and the part that needs a gate.
Session work reaches main through a change request. Merge is default-deny for agents. Approval gates you set. Off until you set them.
So the first build is: the agent drafts, a person reads, the person merges. After a few weeks you know which steps are safe to run without a read.
A build order that works
- Write the five jobs.
- Build the one with the most reliable input. Usually the metrics report or the standup.
- Run it by hand for two weeks and read every output.
- Add the trigger.
- Add the next job.
In my opinion, Kortix fits this build because the job list, the agent files and the connectors sit in one repo you can read and change. I work on Kortix's marketing, so weigh that accordingly.
If you are still working out what the role is, start with what an AI chief of staff is. If you are comparing products, AI chief of staff tools covers the field, and open-source AI chief of staff covers what you can run yourself.
The trigger the change request adds
triggers: - slug: weekly-metrics-report name: Weekly metrics report on: cron: "0 0 6 * * 1" run: agent: weekly-report prompt: Load the weekly-metrics-report skill and post this week's metrics report to #metrics.The weekly report runs every Monday at 06:00, each run in a new session on its own cloud computer.
Questions before you build
How long does it take to build an AI chief of staff?
The first job is a short build: one agent file, one skill, one trigger. The job list and the first two weeks of reading its output take longer than the files do.
Do I need to know how to code to build an AI chief of staff?
No. The setup is a prompt you paste into a session, and the agent writes the files and opens a change request. You read the change request and merge it. That is a review.
What tools does an AI chief of staff need access to?
The tools the job already uses: the database for the metrics report, Linear and GitHub for the standup, the calendar and transcript for meeting notes, and Slack to post. On Kortix each one is a connector you add in the project.
Can an AI chief of staff run on a schedule?
Yes. A schedule, a webhook or an event in another app starts a session with nobody at the keyboard. The weekly report runs on a Monday cron, and the meeting notes agent starts when a call ends.
Start with one job this week.
Write the five jobs down, build the one with the cleanest input, and read its output for two weeks before you add a trigger.
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