Daily Pulse

Overview

Daily Pulse generates a personalized morning briefing that synthesizes your calendar and email into actionable insights. By connecting to Google Calendar and Gmail through the Pica MCP Server, it identifies priorities, surfaces urgent items, and helps you start your day with clarity.

When to Use This Skill

Trigger this skill when users request:

• "What's my daily pulse?"
• "Give me my morning briefing"
• "What should I focus on today?"
• "Show me today's priorities"
• "What's on my agenda?"
• "Help me plan my day"
• Any variation requesting a daily overview or pulse check

How It Works

The skill follows a three-phase process to generate your daily briefing:

Phase 1: Data Collection

Calendar Events (via Pica MCP Server)

• Retrieve today's calendar events from Google Calendar
• Include event titles, times, attendees, and descriptions
• Capture meeting durations and locations (if applicable)

Email Summary (via Pica MCP Server)

• Fetch unread Gmail messages from today
• Extract sender, subject, timestamp, and preview content
• Identify emails requiring action vs. informational emails

Phase 2: Analysis & Prioritization

Event Intelligence

• Identify high-impact meetings (1-on-1s, client calls, presentations)
• Detect preparation requirements from event descriptions
• Calculate available focus blocks between meetings
• Flag scheduling conflicts or back-to-back meetings

Email Triage

• Categorize by urgency (time-sensitive, actionable, informational)
• Identify emails from key people or about ongoing projects
• Surface items requiring responses before EOD
• Detect opportunities or inbound requests

Time Analysis

• Calculate total meeting time vs. available focus time
• Identify optimal work blocks for deep work
• Flag overbooked periods or insufficient breaks

Phase 3: Briefing Generation

Generate a structured daily pulse containing:

1. Executive Summary (Top 3 Priorities)

• The most important items requiring attention today
• Action-oriented statements with context

2. Calendar Intelligence

• Total meetings with breakdown by type
• High-priority events requiring preparation
• Available focus blocks for deep work
• Recommendations for rescheduling low-priority items

3. Email Priorities

• Urgent emails requiring immediate action
• Important emails needing responses today
• Quick wins (emails that take <5 minutes)
• Can-wait items (FYI or low priority)

4. Time Optimization

• Best windows for focused work
• Suggested task sequencing
• Energy management recommendations

5. Quick Actions

• Immediate 2-minute tasks to clear
• Preparation items for upcoming meetings
• Follow-ups to send

Output Format

Structure the daily pulse as follows:

🌅 Daily Pulse for [Date]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎯 TOP 3 PRIORITIES
1. [Most important item with context]
2. [Second priority with context]
3. [Third priority with context]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📅 CALENDAR INTELLIGENCE ([X] meetings, [Y]h total)

HIGH-IMPACT EVENTS
- [Time] - [Event Name]
  → [Why it matters / Prep needed]

FOCUS BLOCKS AVAILABLE
- [Time Range] - [Duration] 
  → [Recommendation for use]

⚠️ SCHEDULING NOTES
- [Any conflicts, back-to-backs, or recommendations]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📧 EMAIL PRIORITIES ([X] unread)

🔴 URGENT (Action Required Today)
- From: [Sender] | Re: [Subject]
  → [Why urgent / What's needed]

🟡 IMPORTANT (Response Needed)
- From: [Sender] | Re: [Subject]
  → [Context / Suggested action]

⚡ QUICK WINS (<5 min)
- [Brief email summaries that can be handled quickly]

📥 FYI / Lower Priority
- [Count] informational emails can wait

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏰ TIME OPTIMIZATION

BEST FOCUS WINDOWS
- [Time] - Deep work on [suggested task]
- [Time] - Batch email responses

ENERGY MANAGEMENT
- [Recommendations based on meeting density]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✅ QUICK ACTIONS (Do These First)

1. [Immediate 2-min action]
2. [Prep for upcoming meeting]
3. [Quick follow-up to send]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Best Practices

Tone & Language

• Be concise and action-oriented
• Use clear, scannable formatting with emojis for visual hierarchy
• Focus on "what matters" and "what to do" not just "what exists"
• Provide context for why things are prioritized

Prioritization Logic

• Weight meetings by: attendee seniority, meeting type, preparation needs
• Weight emails by: sender importance, subject keywords, time-sensitivity
• Consider recency (items happening soon > items later in day)

Time Management

• Always identify at least one substantial focus block if possible
• Flag when the day is overbooked (>80% meeting time)
• Suggest protecting focus time when applicable

Contextual Intelligence

• Connect related items (e.g., email about a project + meeting about same project)
• Identify patterns (e.g., multiple requests from same person/topic)
• Surface anomalies (unusual sender, unexpected meeting, urgent language)

Error Handling

If Calendar Access Fails

• Inform user that calendar couldn't be accessed via Pica
• Provide email-only pulse with disclaimer
• Suggest troubleshooting Pica MCP Server connection

If Gmail Access Fails

• Inform user that email couldn't be accessed via Pica
• Provide calendar-only pulse with disclaimer
• Suggest checking Pica authentication

If Both Fail

• Clearly explain the connection issue
• Provide instructions for reconnecting Pica MCP Server
• Offer to generate pulse again once connection is restored

If No Events or Emails

• Generate a positive pulse noting the light schedule
• Suggest proactive tasks or goals to work on
• Highlight this as an opportunity for deep work or planning

Privacy & Sensitivity

• Never quote full email contents verbatim in the pulse
• Summarize sensitive information professionally
• If calendar events seem private, reference them discreetly
• Focus on actionable insights rather than raw data dumps

Example Interactions

User: "What's my daily pulse?"

Claude: [Fetches calendar events via Pica, fetches unread emails via Pica, analyzes data, generates formatted pulse as shown above]

User: "Give me my morning briefing"

Claude: [Same process - recognizes this as a pulse request]

User: "What should I focus on first?"

Claude: [Generates pulse with extra emphasis on the Quick Actions section]