Your first 15 minutes

You just logged into a fresh Jootle instance. Now what?

This chapter is the short list of things to do in the first fifteen minutes. Nothing here is mandatory; you can skip the whole chapter and still use Jootle. But these are the moves that pay back the most over the next month, and they’re easy to do right now while the slate is clean.

Step 1: Name your AI

The first prompt on a new instance asks you what to call your assistant. There’s no wrong answer. People pick:

A name with personality (Jarvis, Marvin, Otto, Jeeves).
A name that’s just a name (Sam, Lily, Greg).
An acronym from the business (Aiden the assistant for Acme).
“Assistant” (boring but completely fine).

Two minor tips:

Don’t pick the name of a person you talk to a lot. “Hey Sam” gets ambiguous if Sam is also a colleague you mention in chat.
Pick something you’ll be comfortable saying out loud if you ever use Telegram voice notes or speak to your AI directly. “Hey Beelzebub” gets tiring.

You can rename it later. The name shows up in the UI and is how you’d address it on text channels.

Step 2: Set the basics

Open the Settings view in the sidebar. Set:

Your name. This is what your AI calls you. First name is enough.
Your time zone. Important for scheduling, reminders, and any goal that fires “every morning”.
Your default working hours. Used by scheduling, by goals that respect quiet hours, and by your AI’s sense of urgency.

That’s it for setup. The rest of the settings have sensible defaults.

Step 3: Have one real conversation

Open the Chat view. Type something that’s actually on your mind. Don’t try to test the system; just talk to it the way you would in any chat.

A few patterns that work well for the first conversation:

Introduce a person. “Lily is my wife. We have two kids, Aubrey and Reese. We live in Austin.”
Introduce a project. “I’m renovating my kitchen this summer. Budget is around $40k. Contractor is Mike Reynolds at Reynolds Renovations.”
Ask for something small. “What’s on my calendar tomorrow?” (Works once you’ve connected calendar, see below.)
Set a standing instruction. “I prefer short, direct emails. Don’t draft replies over 150 words unless I ask for more.”

Your AI will respond, ask follow-up questions if anything’s unclear, and quietly start filling in its knowledge graph. (See Knowledge and memory for what’s happening under the hood.)

Step 4: Connect at least one channel

You can use Jootle entirely from the web app, but most people end up using one of the other channels as their daily driver:

Telegram. Best for quick capture, voice notes, on-the-go chat. Set this up next if you’d ever use your phone.
Email. Lets you CC your AI on a thread and have it respond. Also lets your AI send email on your behalf.
Slack (if you live in Slack for work). Less common for individuals, important for teams.

There’s a chapter for each: Channels. Pick one and connect it now. It takes a few minutes.

You only need one to start. The others can wait.

Step 5: Connect Google (if you use Google)

If your email and calendar are on Google, walk through Connect Google Workspace now. It’s the longest single setup task in this list (around ten minutes), and it’s the one that unlocks the most.

Once Google is connected:

“What’s on my calendar today?” works.
“Has Mike replied to the kitchen quote thread?” works.
“Find the spec doc for the redesign and summarize the open questions” works.
“Watch my inbox for anything from the lawyer and let me know immediately” works.

You don’t have to connect everything at once. You can start with just Gmail. You can add Drive or Calendar later in two clicks. But the first-time Google project setup is the long part, so it’s worth doing once and getting it out of the way.

Step 6: Browse the toolkits

Open the Toolkits view. You’ll see what’s installed by default (Ideas, Lists, and so on). Click Library to see what else is available.

You don’t have to install anything yet. The point of this step is to see what’s there so you know it exists.

The toolkits that pay back fastest for most people:

Ideas (already installed): everyone has unfinished thinking. This gives it somewhere to live.
Lists (already installed): the daily-driver.
Forge: if you produce content (newsletters, posts, video scripts) on any cadence.
Finance: if you want help tracking spending, income, and forecasts.
CRM: if you sell or maintain relationships with customers / clients.

If one of those describes you, install it now. It takes a few seconds. You can uninstall later if it doesn’t earn its keep.

Step 7: Set one goal

A goal is something your AI does on a schedule, without you needing to remember. The classic first goal for a new instance:

“Each Sunday evening, send me a summary of what moved this week across my projects, with anything I should pay attention to flagged.”

Ask your AI to set it up. It will. Sunday will come, the summary will arrive, and you’ll have an early example of the value of an always-on assistant.

If “weekly summary” isn’t quite your speed, pick another:

Daily brief in the morning, on what’s coming up.
Watch a specific inbox folder and tell you about anything interesting.
Send a sales report every Monday.
Remind you to fill in your habit tracker each evening.

One goal is enough. You can add more as you find their shape.

What you’ve accomplished

In about fifteen minutes you’ve:

Given your AI a name and the basics about you.
Had one real conversation that started building your knowledge graph.
Connected at least one channel (and possibly Google).
Browsed what toolkits are available.
Set one goal that will produce value this week without you doing anything else.

Everything else in the handbook is optional. You can stop here, use Jootle for a couple of weeks, and come back when something specific comes up.

If you want a deeper read next, the recommendation is:

Playbooks and goals, so you have the mental model for how automation works.
Knowledge and memory, so you understand what your AI is and isn’t accumulating.
The toolkit chapters for whichever toolkits you ended up installing.

Welcome to your instance.