Photo Session Prep Guide

What it does

Every Calendly booking gets a prep guide from your style guide (what to wear, timeline, what to bring), then a reminder with the meeting spot 2 days before.

• Starts within seconds of each Calendly booking, with the client's answers (session type, location, number of people).
• AI writes a prep guide from your own style guide: what to wear for that session and place, the timeline and what to bring, plus your meeting spot and weather policy.
• You approve it first unless your style guide switches approval off; it's emailed with replies to your studio inbox.
• Two days before the session (09:00, worked out in code), re-checks the booking in Calendly and sends a short reminder with the meeting spot (canceled bookings are skipped).
• Dates are worked out in code, never by the AI: days until or since each date, the window and business days are computed in your workflow's time zone, and records outside the window are skipped before the AI sees them.

What it needs

• A paid plan (agents run live on paid plans; the wait also needs the Wait step enabled on your workspace).
• An AI provider key (Settings → AI Providers).
• Calendly on a paid plan (Standard or higher), connected in Settings → Integrations.
• Your written style guide.

What it doesn't do

• Sessions booked more than 31 days ahead get only the guide (a run can wait at most 30 days).
• It reads the first invitee only and never invents locations, prices or policies.
• It doesn't reschedule or take payments.
• Coming soon until Calendly is approved.

Availability and plans

Included free on the Enterprise plan; on other paid plans it's a one-time purchase per workspace (the price is on the Agents page). The Agents page in the app always shows its current status.

Before you start

• A paid plan: agents run live, and the Free plan only runs Dry Runs.
• An AI provider key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and more) in Settings → AI Providers. AI usage is billed by your provider.
• These apps, connected in Settings → Integrations: Calendly.
• The app it watches, connected in Settings → Integrations (the agent starts from an app event).
• About 15 minutes.

• Bring your own AI key
• Calendly (beta — waiting for the vendor's approval)

Set it up step by step

Get the agent first (buy it, or it's already yours when your plan includes it), then in Agents → My agents press “Set up this agent”. That creates the agent's workflow in your workspace (it counts towards your plan's workflow limit) and opens the canvas with a setup checklist above it. Each item links to the exact place to go and ticks itself off when it's done.

1. Connect your AI provider

The AI steps run on your own key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and more). Add one in Settings → AI Providers.

• Connect your AI provider

2. Connect Calendly

Connect the Calendly account clients book with (Settings → Integrations → Calendly). The instant trigger needs a paid Calendly plan.

• Connecting Calendly (beta)

3. Pick your Calendly account

Open the trigger and “Re-check the booking” and pick your Calendly account in each.

4. Paste your style guide

Open “Write the prep guide” and “Write the reminder” and replace the placeholder in each with your style guide.

5. Add your studio inbox

Open “Email the prep guide” and “Email the reminder” and enter the Reply-to address.

6. Test it with Dry Run

Press Dry Run: the agent runs on sample data with no messages sent and nothing written to your apps.

• Dry Run vs Run

7. Switch the trigger on

Open the trigger and press “Activate app trigger”: from then on each new booking gets its prep guide.

How it works

The agent is a normal workflow with 20 steps (2 AI steps, with a person approving in Reviews). You can open, edit and monitor it like any other workflow.

• New Calendly booking — Starts on “New booking (instant)” in Calendly (an app event). Starts within seconds of a client booking a session in Calendly, with their answers to your booking questions (session type, location, number of people). Needs a paid Calendly plan.
• Write the prep guide — AI step (runs on your AI provider key). AI writes a prep guide for this session type and location from your style guide (what to wear, timeline, what to bring). When the reminder goes is worked out in code.
• Send the guide? — Decision: picks the branch to follow. Canceled bookings are skipped; guides wait for your approval unless your style guide says otherwise.
• Not sent — Kept in the run history. Branch: Skip. Canceled booking or no email; the run history keeps it.
• Approve the prep guide — A person approves or rejects it in Reviews (the run waits). Branch: Check first. You read the guide in Reviews, edit it and approve.
• Ready to send — Decision: picks the branch to follow. Branch: Automatic / Approved. Approved or automatic guides are emailed now.
• Held — Kept in the run history. Branch: Skip. The guide was marked not to send.
• Email the prep guide — Sends an email from your workspace's sender. Branch: Send. Sends the guide to the client, with replies coming back to your studio inbox.
• Work out the reminder date — Step. In code, not AI: the session date's days from today, and the reminder time — 09:00 two days before the session. Sessions more than 31 days ahead get no reminder (a run can wait at most 30 days). Change the time (add.time) or set your time zone (timezone, e.g. America/New_York; UTC otherwise) here.
• Reminder possible? — Decision: picks the branch to follow. Sessions more than 31 days ahead (or with an unreadable start) get only the guide.
• Guide only — Kept in the run history. Branch: Too far ahead. The session is more than 31 days away (a run can wait at most 30 days); the date check's reason is in the run history.
• Wait until 2 days before — Waits until a date taken from the data (at most 30 days). Branch: Remind later. Pauses until 09:00 two days before the session (computed in code; right away when that's past); the run resumes on its own (Dry Run doesn't wait).
• Re-check the booking — Calendly: Get an event's invitees. Reads the booking again from Calendly: still active, or canceled or rescheduled?
• Write the reminder — AI step (runs on your AI provider key). AI skips canceled bookings, then writes a short reminder with the meeting spot. Whether the session is still 1–3 days away is checked in code next.
• Still 1–3 days away? — Step. In code, not AI: after the wait, checks the session is 1 to 3 days from today (not today, not past, not still far off). Change the window here (within.min / within.max).
• Send the reminder? — Decision: picks the branch to follow. Canceled bookings, and sessions not 1–3 days away (checked in code), get no reminder.
• No reminder — Kept in the run history. Branch: No reminder. The run history keeps why no reminder was sent.
• Email the reminder — Sends an email from your workspace's sender. Branch: Remind. Sends the reminder with the meeting spot.
• Reminder sent — Kept in the run history. The run history keeps both emails.
• Not sent — Kept in the run history. Branch: Rejected. You rejected the guide; nothing was sent.

Test it with Dry Run

Press Dry Run in the canvas. The agent runs on the sample data stored on its trigger (the “Sample data for Dry Run” box), so you can check every step's output before anything is live. The sample has the same shape as a real event from the app.

Sample data fields

event_uri, name, status, start_time, end_time, event_type, location, join_url, invitee_uri, invitee_name, invitee_email, timezone, questions_and_answers (a list), canceled_by, cancel_reason, rescheduled, created_at, invitee.

• Nothing is sent or written: app actions, emails and Slack posts are simulated, and AI steps don't call your AI provider.
• Approval steps use the Dry Run decision you pick in the step's settings (approved, rejected or timeout), so you can try each branch.
• Wait steps don't wait: they report how long they would wait and the run goes on.

Go live

• Open the trigger and press “Activate app trigger”: from then on each new booking gets its prep guide.
• Activating the app trigger needs the trigger's connected account. The first check only remembers what's already there, so older items don't start runs; the same item never starts two runs.
• The setup checklist adds a “paid plan” item before activation: live runs need a paid plan (the Free plan only runs Dry Runs).
• When every checklist item is done and the trigger is on, the checklist says “Live — this agent is running”. Follow its runs in the workflow's History tab and in Analytics → Agents.

• App event triggers
• Switching a trigger on (Activation)

Questions

Which booking questions should I add?

Session type (if one Calendly event covers several), location and number of people. The guide uses the answers; it works without them, with more general advice.

What if the client cancels?

Two days before, the agent reads the booking again from Calendly and skips canceled ones. A reschedule counts as a new booking and gets its own guide.

Does it work on a free Calendly plan?

No: the instant trigger uses Calendly webhooks, which need a paid plan (Standard or higher).

Troubleshooting

• “No AI provider connected” or a rejected key: connect or fix the key in Settings → AI Providers, then press Test there.
• A checklist item stays unticked: the setting is still empty or still contains its placeholder text. Open the step from the checklist and fill it in.
• An app step fails with “Needs reconnect”: the account's access was revoked or expired. Reconnect it in Settings → Integrations.
• No runs start: activate the app trigger with a connected account. Only items created after activation start runs.
• A run shows as paused: it's waiting for someone in Reviews to approve or reject it.
• A run shows “Waiting until …” in History: that's a Wait step; it continues on its own (it can be cancelled through the API).
• A step failed: open the run in History and check that step in the Trace tab for the error and what it received.

• Debugging failed runs
• Error messages
• Get help