Editor's Synopsis
Daria Cupareanu describes how she built a personal AI assistant that operates 24/7 through Telegram, handling tasks like calendar management, email drafting, web searches, idea capture, and document organization — all from a single message. The system is powered by n8n (a workflow automation platform), the OpenAI API, and integrations with Google Cloud services, Notion, and SerpAPI. Two n8n workflows drive the architecture: one for real-time request handling and another for processing and organizing ideas in Notion. A custom "mega-prompt" gives the AI agent the context to interpret requests and route them to the appropriate service.
The author breaks down the cost at roughly $23/month — $20 for n8n's cloud subscription plus approximately $2.64 in OpenAI credits for around 300 tasks — and contrasts this with hiring a human assistant. She reports saving approximately 4 hours of admin time per week, capturing 24 ideas that would have otherwise been lost, and significantly reducing mental overhead from context-switching between apps. The post is structured as a step-by-step tutorial, though the full implementation guide (including workflow JSON files, connection guides, and the AI agent prompt) is gated behind a paid Substack subscription.
