How We Built Our AI Email Assistant: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Cora

AI and I

You don’t need to handle your inbox anymore. It’s Cora’s job now.

Cora is the AI chief of staff we built for your email at Every. It’s been in private beta for the last 6 months and currently manages email for 2,500 beta users—and today we’re making it available for anyone to use. Start your free 7-day trial by going to: https://cora.computer/

Cora is the $150K executive assistant that costs $15/month. Or $20/month if you want an Every subscription, too. This is what that actually means:

• Cora understands what’s important to you, screens your inbox, and only lets the most relevant emails through.

• The rest of your emails are summarized in a beautifully designed brief that’s sent to you twice a day.

• If it has enough context, Cora drafts replies for you in your voice.

• You can talk to Cora like you would your chief of staff—you can give it special instructions on how you want certain emails handled, ask it to summarize things, and even give you an opinion on complex decisions.

In this episode of AI & I, I sat down with the team behind Cora—Brandon Gell, head of the product studio; Kieran Klaassen, Cora’s general manager; and Nityesh Agarwal, engineer at Cora—for a closer look at how it all came together. We talk about:

• The story of the first time Brandon, Kieran, and I used Cora, while sipping wine at the Every retreat in Nice.

• The evolution of Cora’s categorization system, from a 4-hour vibe-coded prototype to a multi-faceted product with thousands of happy users.

• The features on Cora’s roadmap we’re most excited about: a unified brief across different email accounts, an iOS app, and an even more powerful assistant.

This is a must-watch if you’re curious about what it feels like to give Cora your inbox, and take back your life. Go to https://cora.computer/ to start your 7-day free trial now.

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Timestamps:

1. Introduction: 00:01:40

2. Three ways Cora transforms your inbox (and your day): 00:04:21

3. A live walkthrough of Cora’s features: 00:05:09

4. The inside story of the first time Kieran, Brandon, and Dan used Cora: 00:12:13

5. Train Cora like you would a trusted chief of staff: 00:16:30

6. The AI tools that blew our minds while building Cora: 00:27:25

7. How we build workflows that compound with AI at Every: 00:30:34

8. The dream features that we’d like to put on Cora’s roadmap: 00:42:36

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Try Cora now with a 7-day free trial: https://cora.computer/

• The episode about how Kieran and Nityesh use Claude Code to build Cora: "How Two Engineers Ship Like a Team of 15 With AI Agents"