Hi friends,
At Base, we're trying something new alongside you: an EA-focused newsletter to help you grow in your AI journey. It'll land in your inbox weekly. Each newsletter will contain the info and steps you need to build an automation or workflow that makes your day-to-day easier.
We are all at different points in our learning with AI so this newsletter is intended to be approachable enough for folks who have never opened an AI tool, and useful enough to those who have been using AI for a while.
The Base team strongly believes that AI won’t replace the EA role so long as assistants are keeping up with the world of AI. But we know how overwhelming it can feel to find advice on AI that is created for EAs, free, and actually practical enough to use immediately.
So that’s what we’re going to do!
Let’s jump in!
Before we get started
What you’ll need:
A free AI account. Go to chatgpt.com or claude.ai and sign up. That's the whole setup.
About 20 minutes the first time, and a real meeting coming up to try this on.
A quick note on time: the first run takes about 20 minutes because you're learning the steps. By your third meeting it's closer to 5. The work is front-loaded, then it pays you back.
Confidentiality
A reminder not to post truly sensitive information (legal/proprietary, compensation) into a public tool.
Mistakes to avoid
Don't paste output directly into an email without reading it first - always verify facts/figures/dates and names.
Week 1
Meeting Brief AI Workflow
We’ve all been there. It’s 90 minutes before a meeting and you are hustling with 12 tabs open, pulling LinkedIn bios, searching for old email threads, checking calendar notes, and trying to remember what happened the last time these people met. If you can relate, this one is for you.
This week’s newsletter gives you everything you need to use AI to create an external facing agenda and an internal brief for your executive.
Here’s what that workflow looks like.
Starter: Meeting brief AI workflow (no integrations needed)
Step 1: Gather your context
Before you jump into the fun part, spend 10 minutes gathering context for AI to use:
Calendar details: who, why, what (+ any attachments)
The email thread that led to this meeting
Notes from any previous meetings with this same group of people.
The LinkedIn "About" section for key attendees
(highlight and copy the text) if they are new contacts to your exec.Any internal context that you have
Do a quick google for any recent news
Step 2: Set up the prompt
Open a new chat with your AI tool (Chat GPT or Claude are perfect for this). Copy and paste the following prompt but don’t click send just yet. Enter the context you gathered in step 1 under each type of context towards the end of the prompt (Calendar invite, Email thread, Prior mtg notes, LinkedIn, Company Context). Send the prompt to AI.
You are preparing a meeting brief for my executive, [FIRST NAME]. I am the exec's EA.Throughout this prompt executive = [FIRST NAME]
Read everything pasted below before producing any output.
Produce two documents using the context provided. Output the documents directly.
DOCUMENT 1:
Executive Brief (internal only)
- Attendees, titles, and organizations
- Why this meeting is happening and what's at stake
- Relevant history with this person or company
- What my exec should aim to accomplish
- One thing to be careful about or avoid
- 4 suggested talking points
DOCUMENT 2:
External Agenda (safe to share with all attendees)
- Header at the top: meeting title, date, time, and full list of participants
- Clean, professional agenda my exec can send to the room
- Neutral language, no internal context included
Format: use the meeting title as the header for each document. Keep each document clearly separated.
CONTEXT PASTED BELOW:
Calendar invite (attendees, time, stated purpose, any attached notes or docs):
Email thread (correspondence that led to this meeting or recent emails involving these attendees):
Prior meeting notes (anything from previous meetings with these people, even rough notes):
LinkedIn (About section and current role for each external attendee):
Company context (one or two paragraphs of relevant news or background on their organization, if applicable):
Step 3: Ask AI what’s missing
Encourage AI to be a strategic partner. Send it this question:
What information would make this brief stronger that I haven't provided,
and where would I be most likely to find it?Step 4: Review and refine
Read the output and scan for anything off. Tell your AI tool anything you want to be changed. Talk to it like you’d talk to a human, this is conversational.
Step 5: Save the output
Download the two documents in the format you want, or copy and paste the text into a Word doc. Save the prompt too. Every meeting after this is just new context in the same structure.
Advanced: Meeting brief AI workflow (if your AI tool is connected to your exec’s calendar and email)
When your AI tool is connected to your exec's calendar and email (whether that's through Google Workspace, Outlook, or another integration), you can skip the manual gathering.
Try out this prompt:
You're preparing meeting briefs for [Executive name]. I'm their EA. Pull every external meeting on their's calendar for [Date]. External means at least one attendee outside Base. Ignore everything else.
For each meeting, gather context from the calendar invite, attached documents, email threads with attendees, and prior meeting notes.
Run a quick web search on each external attendee to confirm current role and employer. Facts only, no speculation.
For each meeting, produce two documents:
DOCUMENT 1: Executive Brief (internal)
Attendees with title and organization
Public profile (3 to 5 lines from public web sources: current role, employer, location, one or two relevant notes; say "no reliable profile found" if ambiguous)
Why this meeting is happening and what's at stake
Relevant history with the person or company
What Sara should aim to accomplish
One thing to be careful about
3 talking points
DOCUMENT 2: External Agenda (shareable)
Header at top: meeting title, date, time, full participant list
Clean, professional agenda in neutral language with no internal context
Order meetings chronologically. Keep each document clearly separated.
Curious about how to connect your exec’s calendar and email to your AI tool?
Check with your exec, then ask your AI to teach you how to set it up step-by-step. You can share your comfort level with your AI tool so it adjusts the response of the instructions to your level.
AI Term of the Week: Context Window
Sounds complicated. Actually very simple.
A context window is how much text an AI can hold in a chat session. It's the AI's working memory for that conversation. Every time you send a message, it re-reads the whole chat from the start. At some point, it runs out of space and starts dropping older messages to make room for new ones. It effectively forgets the earlier information. You can still go back and see the older messages, but your AI tool doesn’t.
Keep in mind that not only does AI lose the context, each time you query your chat, it sends the entire thread back for an answer - this gets expensive. Rather if a thread is getting long, ask your AI to summarize the key context then paste the output in a new chat to start fresh.
We hope you found this newsletter helpful and we can’t wait to share more AI content with you next week!
Cheers to learning new things together,
The Base Team
Have you tried out Base’s free voice-to-text delegation app?
Your exec can send you voice memos from the app (think: driving their kid to school, running between meetings) and Base Delegate sends you the voice memo, a transcript, and an AI-generated tasks list. Respond within the thread (by voice or text) and both you and your executive can attach files and pictures for more context.