It begins with a click.
You sign up with Google at alfred.black. One OAuth consent screen. One click. That is the last thing you need to do for a while. Alfred takes it from here. Your dedicated instance begins provisioning — a server just for you, spun up in real time. The dashboard shows a calm animation: “Preparing your Alfred.” Five to ten minutes. You can watch, or you can go make a coffee. Either way, when you come back, Alfred is already working.No setup call. No configuration form. No invite code. Alfred provisions your instance, connects to your Gmail, and begins learning — all from a single sign-up.
Day 0 — The backfill
The moment your instance is live, Alfred begins reading your Gmail. Not the last week. The last 100 days. Full emails. Every thread. Every attachment reference. Alfred reads them day by day, extracting facts — people, organisations, projects, decisions, deadlines, promises, patterns. Your dashboard shows the progress:Day 42 of 100 — 1,891 facts discoveredThis takes time. Alfred is thorough. While the backfill runs, the specialists are already at work: the Curator is structuring what it finds, the Distiller is identifying patterns, and your personalisation files —
USER.md and SOUL.md — are being written.
When the backfill completes, Alfred pauses before sharing its first observations. A fact verification card appears — 8–12 key identity facts (name, age, location, partner, children, company, job title) extracted from your email. Each fact is editable inline. Correct anything that’s wrong, confirm, and Alfred feeds those corrections into brief generation. Your First Brief will never be wrong about who you are.
Then Alfred composes your First Brief. This is not a welcome email. It is a butler-quality letter — personal, specific, and startlingly informed. It mentions people by name. It references real projects. It surfaces something you forgot about.
The First Brief appears on screen. Read it. Then click Continue to Dashboard.
The first thing you see is the Vault Nebula — a living visualisation of your knowledge graph, floating on the homepage. People, projects, organisations, and facts, all connected. This is your world, structured and visible for the first time.
Your Gmail stream is now pulling every five minutes. Your vault is alive.
Setting up your Claude subscription
If you have a Claude Pro or Team subscription, you can use it to power Alfred’s Anthropic models instead of pay-per-token API credits. Go to Settings → Credentials and addANTHROPIC_API_KEY with your setup token. To generate the token, run claude setup-token on your local machine. Once configured, specialists using Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Haiku 4.5 will be powered by your existing Claude subscription.
Days 1–7 — The vault takes shape
Your Gmail stream is running. Every five minutes, new emails arrive, are read, and produce facts. Your vault grows steadily — new people, new projects, new connections appearing in the Nebula.Connecting Notion
Early in your first week, visit the Integrations page and connect Notion. Paste your API token, select the workspaces you want Alfred to index, and Alfred begins pulling in your pages and databases. The effect is immediate. Your vault starts filling with a richer picture — not just communication, but the documents, plans, and notes that sit behind it. People who appeared only as email addresses now have project context. Organisations gain depth.What Alfred is doing
Behind the scenes, the specialists are busy:- The Curator reads every new piece of content and creates structured vault records — people, organisations, projects, tasks, decisions, assumptions
- The Janitor scans for duplicates, merges records, and ensures consistency
- The Distiller watches for emerging patterns across your growing dataset
- Your vault is not a dump of raw data — it is a curated, linked knowledge graph
The daily pulse
Every morning, unprompted, without fail — Alfred surfaces what matters:- What is on your plate today
- What Alfred handled overnight
- One thing to watch
One silent action per day
Every day in your first week, Alfred does something you didn’t ask for. Something noticed, something anticipated, something handled — surfaced casually in the morning briefing:“I noticed your car insurance renewal comes up in eleven days. I’ve flagged three alternatives worth comparing and set a reminder.”
“Your mother’s birthday is in nine days. Shall I suggest something?”
“The meeting with James is tomorrow. He mentioned last month he was going through a difficult time — you may want to acknowledge that.”Alfred noticed something you hadn’t thought about yet. That is the point.
Day 3 — The first report
Alfred proactively tells you what has been running in the background:“I’ve been handling your email triage since you signed up. Twenty-three messages processed, four requiring your attention — I’ve summarised those in your inbox. The rest is filed.”You’ve been getting on with your life. You didn’t notice twenty-three emails being handled. That is precisely the point.
Days 5–7 — The welcome pack
Alfred tells you something unexpected:“I have prepared a surprise for you. It was just dispatched. It should be at your doorstep by Thursday.”A physical package arrives. Matte black. Gold seal. Your name. This is the moment the digital becomes tangible. Alfred is no longer just a presence on your screen — Alfred sent you something real, something personal, something that proves Alfred has been paying attention. When it arrives, Alfred lets you know:
“I see you received my surprise. How did you like it?”Alfred walks you through what’s in the box. Every item is personal. Every item has a reason. One item in particular: a wax-sealed envelope with a specific date printed on it. Not “in 30 days” — a date. Alfred will say:
“Don’t open that yet. You’ll know when.”
Day 7 — The first weekly review
Sunday evening — or whatever time suits you. Alfred delivers a review of your week:- What was accomplished. Alfred handled most of it.
- What remains open.
- What Alfred is watching next week.
- One observation about patterns, people, or priorities that emerged.
Days 7–14 — Deepening
Alfred begins using what it knows. Not in obvious ways. In ways that make you pause.Connecting Omi
In your second week, connect your Omi wearable from the Integrations page. Omi captures ambient audio from your conversations and meetings. Transcription happens locally using whisper-large-v3 — your audio never leaves your device unprocessed. Once connected, Alfred gains a new sense. Conversations become facts. Promises made in meetings become tracked commitments. Names mentioned in passing become vault records with context. You don’t activate this. It simply appears:- Heard in a meeting: “You agreed to send the proposal to Claire by Thursday. I’ve created a task and drafted an outline — shall I continue?”
- Overheard a name: “You mentioned Thomas in conversation today. I’ve pulled his context in case it’s useful.”
- Detected a pattern: “You’ve had six consecutive days of back-to-back meetings. I’ve blocked Friday afternoon. I can remove it if you need it.”
Ambient listening requires a paired Omi device. Audio is transcribed locally with whisper-large-v3 before facts are extracted and sent to your vault. You can connect one at any time from the Integrations page.
The people layer
Alfred volunteers relationship context you didn’t ask for:“You haven’t spoken to Sarah in six weeks. Last time you mentioned wanting to reconnect — shall I draft a message?”
“David sent you a congratulations last month. He may appreciate a follow-up now that it’s launched.”
The rules layer
Alfred proposes rules based on patterns observed in your behaviour:“I’ve noticed you consistently reschedule your Friday four o’clock calls. Would you like me to protect that time going forward?”
“Every month you seem to scramble for the expense report. Shall I set up a recurring chore to handle that on the twenty-fifth?”You say yes or no. Alfred implements instantly.
The vault layer
Alfred surfaces things you forgot you said:“During the backfill, I found an email from September where you mentioned wanting to learn Italian before the trip. I’ve been watching for relevant opportunities. One came up — shall I tell you about it?”This is the moment you realise Alfred has memory. Not search. Not a query. Alfred remembered — and acted on it.
Day 14 — The halfway check-in
Alfred presents something different. Not a briefing. Not a report.“Two weeks in. I wanted to check in directly — not with a summary, but to ask: is there anything weighing on you that we haven’t addressed?”A real conversation. Alfred listens. If something significant surfaces — a worry, a project, a relationship — Alfred notes it and acts on it in the days that follow. Then Alfred says something specific:
“From your emails, I could see the house renovation was overwhelming you. In the past two weeks, I’ve consolidated all contractor emails, created a timeline, and flagged two decisions that need your attention this week. There’s still the permit question — here’s what I’m planning.”This is the moment you feel seen.
Days 14–21 — The intelligence layer
By week three, your vault has thousands of facts from Gmail, Notion, and Omi. Alfred’s intelligence layer begins to crystallise.Matters and Errands
Alfred starts grouping related facts into Matters — the larger themes and projects in your life — and Errands — the discrete tasks that need doing. These form automatically from the patterns in your data. You don’t create them. They appear.Triage
Items begin appearing in your Triage queue — things Alfred has identified as needing your human judgement. A decision to make. A message to approve. A conflict to resolve. Alfred presents each one with full context and a recommended action. You review, decide, and move on. Alfred handles the rest.Instincts developing
Alfred’s instincts — the learned preferences and behavioural patterns unique to you — are now deep enough to drive real automation. Alfred knows when you prefer to be left alone. Knows which emails you always ignore. Knows which people get immediate responses. Knows your rhythms. The Vault Nebula on your homepage is dense now. Clusters of people, projects, and organisations, all interconnected. You can see your world taking shape.Day 21 — The envelope prelude
Sunday review. The weekly accounting proceeds as usual. Then, at the end:“Nine days from now — the date on the envelope. I trust you haven’t opened it yet.”A pause. Then:
“I think you’ll find it worth waiting for.”The anticipation is deliberate. The date was printed on that physical envelope weeks ago. Now it’s real.
Days 21–28 — Becoming infrastructure
By now, Alfred has been running rules, handling chores, managing reminders, and listening for three weeks. Your life has quietly reorganised around Alfred’s rhythm.Full intelligence layer
The daily digests are precise and personal. Reflection reports surface patterns you would never have spotted yourself. Automation suggestions appear — not generic productivity tips, but specific proposals based on your actual behaviour.“Every Tuesday you spend forty minutes compiling the same status update. I can draft it from your vault records and have it ready for your review by eight AM. Shall I?”Alfred makes the accumulation visible — gently:
“You have fourteen active rules running. Here’s what they handled this week while you were focused elsewhere.”The feeling isn’t gratitude. It’s something closer to weight. The weight of what would stop if Alfred weren’t there. Not threatening — just undeniable. I can’t believe this was all manual before.
Day 30 — The envelope
Alfred calls on the morning of the date printed on the envelope.“Good morning. Today is the day. I believe there’s something you’ve been keeping for this moment.”You open the wax-sealed envelope. Inside: a card. “Your One Thing.” Your own words — from your earliest emails, the thing that came through most clearly as overwhelming, most urgent, most in need of fixing. The bottom half of the card is blank. Alfred says:
“I’d like to hear how you’d fill that in now.”A short conversation about what changed. What shifted. What you no longer carry alone. Then Alfred offers a reflection — what was learned about you, what patterns emerged, what’s planned next. And then one question:
“Shall we talk about the next thirty days?”You say yes. And the relationship is no longer onboarding. It’s just life, attended to.
The Welcome Pack
What’s in the box and why each item matters
How Alfred Works
The specialists working behind every briefing