Personal Assistant
The Personal Assistant checks selected sources at intervals and contacts you only when it finds something concrete and useful.
What the Personal Assistant does
The Personal Assistant is an ongoing check of your day. At the selected interval it prepares fresh information from allowed sources, evaluates it, and decides whether it should tell you anything. It can flag an important email, an upcoming meeting, a calendar conflict, an overdue item, travel preparation, or a sensible next step.
A check can finish without a message. That is expected: the Personal Assistant should not create a notification merely because its interval has elapsed.
This is different from Scheduled Tasks. The Personal Assistant has a broad responsibility to watch your day and decides whether a message is useful. A scheduled task has one specific instruction and runs it on its defined schedule.
Recommended first setup
Verify the AI account first
Chat must answer normally. Automatic checks cannot finish without a working default AI account.
Open assistant settings
From the Mac menu bar, choose Assistela → Settings → Personal Assistant and enable Scheduled assistant runs.
Choose a sensible interval
Start with 60 minutes or longer. A shorter interval means more checks and normally more LLM usage. Also set quiet hours, for example 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM.
Select Sources
On the Sources tab, enable only the areas it should actually monitor. A typical minimum is Calendar, Reminders, important email, and Temporary Information.
Write your instructions
On the Assistant tab, describe priorities in ordinary language. For example: “On workdays, prioritize customer email and calendar conflicts. Do not notify me about newsletters.” Save the instructions.
Run a safe test
Open the main Personal Assistant screen, click Run Now, and read the latest result.
What a check can include
Important messages, bills, reservations, and items that may require a reply.
Calendar and tasks
Meetings, conflicts, approaching due dates, Reminders, and preparation before an event.
Memory and temporary information
Your preferences, a current trip, stay, commitment, or other time-limited context.
Conversation and follow-ups
Unfinished topics, agreed next steps, routine administration, and a weekly review.
Enabling a source does not bypass its own setup. If Email is not configured or lacks permission, for example, the Personal Assistant cannot use it.
Reading the results
The Personal Assistant screen shows whether the feature is active, the next check, the latest result, and recent runs. A run detail shows its assignment, prepared evidence, actions used, and final answer. A run can be sent, silent, waiting for approval, interrupted, or failed.
- Silent means the check completed but nothing was important enough to send.
- Needs approval means a sensitive or external-changing next step requires your decision.
- Failed usually points to an AI account, service, permission, or connection problem.
An automatic run does not give Assistela unrestricted control. Sensitive, destructive, or payment steps remain subject to approvals and enabled tool access.