Bryce Vernon from Zapier shows how to build a sales prep agent that automatically researches your meeting participants before calls. The agent works by looking at your calendar events for the next day, finding external participants, researching them on the web (what company they work for, who they are), then sending you a Slack message at the end of each day so you’re ready for tomorrow’s meetings. Here’s Bryce’s workflow for building this in Zapier Agents: First, start with a trigger. Like any automation, you need something to kick it off. For this agent, set it to trigger daily at 4 PM. You could also trigger on demand or from any of Zapier’s 8,000 app integrations. Second, write out what you want the agent to do in plain text - just like delegating to an employee. Bryce’s instructions: “Look at all my calendar events for tomorrow. Find external participants, research where they work, their title, how long they’ve been in the role, and any other helpful information. Send in Slack.” Third, add specific actions by inserting them from apps. For calendar events, select your calendar and let the agent decide what values to use for most fields. This is where the power comes in - you can set guardrails or let the agent make decisions. Fourth, configure the output. For Slack, it’s just “send direct message” to yourself. The agent will compile all the research and format it nicely. What’s really cool is the testing interface. When you test, it won’t actually send messages without approval. You can see exactly how it works and provide feedback in the chat interface. Bryce’s test found 2 meetings with external participants, performed Google searches on them, and prepared the Slack message for approval. Bryce emphasizes: “That agent is done. I mean, it’s literally that quick.” Once approved, it runs every day at 4 PM automatically. ➡️ Write agent instructions like you’re delegating to a human assistant. The simpler and clearer your plain-text instructions, the better the agent performs.