Have Gmail travel emails drafted into calendar events
They asked agents to read travel confirmations from Gmail and turn them into Google Calendar entries, but the workflow broke down and had to be finished manually.
- What they did
- The person tested Manus, then ChatGPT Agent, on a travel-admin job: find booking details in Gmail and turn them into a calendar event. They also needed the agent to connect with Google Calendar, so they watched the process closely as it worked through the inbox and event draft. Manus was meant to manage both services, but it moved so slowly and unreliably that they stopped using it and completed the task by hand.
- How it went
- The attempt failed for this use case. They say supervising Manus took about 1.5 hours for a task they estimate would have taken 15 minutes manually, and neither Manus nor ChatGPT Agent managed to create the event from Gmail. They also note that Claude chat handled the same job in under a minute.
- Tips
- For tasks that depend on Gmail and calendar integrations, expect extra oversight and be ready to bail out if the agent stalls. A good test is to have it show the event details for approval before it writes anything to your calendar.
Try it yourself with Manus
Check my Gmail for travel confirmation messages from [airline/hotel/train company] for [trip dates or date range]. For each one, extract the date, time, confirmation number, and place, then prepare a Google Calendar event draft with those details in the description. Before you create, send, or save anything, show me the proposed events and wait for my approval.
Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.
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