Business Owner Quick Start — Your AI Receptionist on Voice & Web

Hey there, and thank you for your purchase!

You’ve just picked up the crash course and the AI humaniser prompt. This guide gets you from zero to a live AI receptionist. One that sounds human and knows your business.

And that too on two channels: voice (phone calls via ElevenLabs) and web (a website chat widget). No technical background needed. Plan for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours of dedicated time. And trust me, if you get this over today you will sleep like ab baby because it’s no ordinary achievement.

Let’s get straight into it.

Where this fits: If you only grabbed the Quickstart, today is the whole job. Your AI goes live on web and voice with the humaniser prompt, and you’re done. If you grabbed the full system, this is Step 1 of 6. Over the next few days we’ll layer in Calendly availability and booking, then rescheduling and cancellation, and finally team routing for businesses with multiple specialists. Either way, today we get the foundation live.

What You Have Right Now

Your purchase includes:

1. The crash course: everything you’re reading and watching right now
2. The AI humaniser prompt: a battle-tested system prompt that makes AI sound natural, warm, and professional. It includes a points-based conditioning system that rewards the AI for human-like conversation. You received two versions: one without tools and one with tools

What you don’t have yet are the booking, rescheduling, and cancellation tools. The things that let your AI receptionist actually take action in your calendar. Right now, your AI receptionist can answer questions about your business, talk about your services, and have natural conversations. It just can’t book appointments on its own yet. When you’re ready to upgrade, the tools are available as separate add-ons:

• Appointment booking: your AI receptionist checks availability and books directly into your calendar. Get the booking tool →
• Rescheduling & cancellation: customers can move or cancel appointments through the AI without calling you. Get rescheduling & cancellation →
• Service & specialist matching: the AI matches customers to the right service and the right team member based on what they need. Get service matching →

Each upgrade plugs directly into the same agent you’re setting up today. And the hardest part is today. Any steps you have to take after an upgrade are short (under 15 minutes) and rather simple.

What an AI Agent Actually Is

Before we set things up, a quick definition so you have this once and for all. An AI agent is made up of three things:

1. Knowledge: your business info, services, policies, pricing. Think of it as the training manual you’d give a new employee on day one, except the AI never forgets it
2. Tools: things the agent can actually do. Check your calendar, book appointments, reschedule, cancel, send confirmations. Right now you have the knowledge layer. The tools come as upgrades
3. Skills: standard operating procedures for complex situations. Qualifying leads, handling different service types, dealing with cancellations. The same SOPs your best employee follows, but consistent every time

You configure this once. It works across every channel. Website, voice, Telegram, ChatGPT, Claude, CLI. Same agent, same tools, same knowledge.

Step 1: Log Into Second Brain OS

Look for the email that says “You have been invited to the Second Brain Operating System” and click the button to log in. It takes you straight to your dashboard. If you can’t find the email, go to secondbrainos.com, click Sign in with Google, and use the same email you purchased with. If that doesn’t work, click “Having trouble signing in?” and it will send you a magic link. Quick note on credits: Everything in Second Brain OS works on a pay-as-you-go basis. No monthly billing. Credits come bundled with your purchase and don’t expire. You can always top up by clicking Add Credits on your dashboard.

Step 2: Configure Your AI Agent

Go to your Profile → AI Agent Settings. You need to set up a few things here.

Your System Prompt

This is where you paste the AI humaniser prompt you received. Update it with:

• Your business name
• Your location or service area
• Your operating hours
• The name you want your AI receptionist to go by (the prompt defaults to “Sarah”, change it to whatever fits your brand)
• If you want a specific accent or dialect, update the nationality/ethnicity placeholder in the prompt

Add your business knowledge directly into the prompt, above the personality and conversation guidelines section. Your services, pricing, policies, specialist or staff info. Whatever a new receptionist would need to know on day one. Keep the personality and conversation guidelines at the bottom. Pro tip: the AI pays more attention to what comes last, so your behavioural instructions should always be at the end. If your business has a small set of services and prices (20-30 items), adding them directly into the prompt works great. For anything more complex, you can set up a separate knowledge base later.

Your OpenAI API Key

This powers the AI model behind your website chat widget.

1. Go to platform.openai.com/api-keys. Sign up with Google if you don’t have an account
2. Create a new API key (name it anything, e.g. “My AI Agent”)
3. Important: Top up your OpenAI account with $5-10. The API key won’t work without credits
4. Copy the key and paste it into the open_ai_api_key field in your SBOS profile

Domain & Public Domain Key

Leave these two fields empty for now. They’re only needed once you’ve deployed your website chat widget, which happens in Step 4.

The AI Model

Leave this as the default. It’s already set to the latest OpenAI model. No changes needed. Click Update and you’re done with configuration.

Step 3: Deploy Your Voice AI Receptionist (ElevenLabs)

This is where it gets exciting. You’re giving your AI receptionist a real voice. Customers will call and speak to a natural-sounding AI that knows your business, answers questions, and. Once you upgrade to the booking tools. Books appointments directly into your calendar.

Create Your ElevenLabs Account

1. Sign up at elevenlabs.io (starter plan is $5/month)
2. Go to Agents and click the plus icon to create a new agent
3. Select Blank Agent: name it something like “[Your Business] AI Receptionist”
4. Do not select “chat only”, you want voice enabled

Add the System Prompt

Paste the humaniser prompt into the system prompt field. Use the version without tools for now (the one that doesn’t have the Tools section at the bottom). When you upgrade to the booking tools later, you’ll switch to the version with tools. When you paste the prompt, you’ll notice some text becomes bold. These are system variables (wrapped in double curly brackets) that ElevenLabs fills in automatically, like the current time. The only thing you need to set manually is your timezone from the dropdown.

Pick a Voice

Go to Voice settings and browse the voice library. I recommend:

• V3 Conversational model family: adds a tiny bit of delay but the calls sound significantly more natural. Worth it
• Pick whatever voice fits your brand. Male, female, gender-neutral, accented. Listen to a few and go with your gut
• If you specified a nationality or dialect in your prompt, pick a voice that matches

Choose the Right AI Model

Since you’re starting with the humaniser prompt only (no tools yet), use a cheaper, faster model. It handles conversations beautifully. Answering questions about your business, discussing your services, having natural back-and-forth. It just doesn’t need the horsepower required for tool execution. When you upgrade to the booking tools, you’ll switch to a smarter model like GPT-4o that can handle tool calls. The switch takes 10 seconds. Just change the model dropdown.

Connect Second Brain OS (For When You Add Tools)

This step is optional right now but worth doing so you’re ready when you upgrade. This is what gives your voice agent the ability to actually use tools:

1. Go to elevenlabs.io/app/agents/settings
2. Under Workspace Secrets, add a secret named secondbrainos-api-key with your full SBOS API key (including the Bearer prefix)
3. Go to Developers → Environment Variables, add a variable named SECONDBRAINOS_API_KEY, set type to Secret, and select the secret you just created
4. Go to elevenlabs.io/app/agents/integrations
5. Click Add Integration → Custom MCP Server
6. Configure:
   • Name: Second Brain OS MCP
   • Type: Streamable HTTP
   • URL: https://api.secondbrainos.com/mcp?user_id=YOUR_USER_ID (your user ID is the first part of your API key, before the :)
   • Request Header: Key = Authorization, Type = Environment Variable, Value = SECONDBRAINOS_API_KEY
   • Tool Approval: No Approval
   • Tool Settings: Force pre-tool speech = On, Disable interruptions = On, Execution mode = Post-Speech, Tool call sound = Typing, Sound behavior = Always play
7. Check “I trust this MCP server” and click Add Server
8. Refresh the page. Look for the green connection icon

Once you purchase the booking tools, they’ll appear here automatically. No reconfiguration needed.

Test It

Click Preview / Test agent in ElevenLabs and make a live test call. Try:

• Ask about your business hours
• Ask what services you offer
• Ask about pricing
• Have a natural back-and-forth conversation

The AI should sound human, stay on-brand, and answer accurately based on the knowledge you added to the prompt.

Step 4: Deploy Your Website (ChatKit)

We’re going to spin up a website for you with your AI receptionist built in. Under 5 minutes, zero cost, no code.

Set Up GitHub

You’ll need a GitHub account. Go to github.com and sign up with Google. GitHub is just file storage for code. Think of it as Google Drive for websites. You won’t need to write any code.

Deploy With One Click

Click the button below to deploy the ChatKit frontend to your Vercel account:

1. Vercel will ask you to authorise your GitHub account. Click Authorise. Vercel is a free hosting platform, like GoDaddy or Hostinger but with a generous free plan
2. Give your project a name (e.g. “my-website” or your business name) and click Create
3. Vercel clones the template, builds it, and pushes it live. You get a free domain like my-website.vercel.app

Update Your Domain Key

1. Click Continue to Dashboard in Vercel, then go to your GitHub repository (Vercel links you to it)
2. Open index.html, click the edit icon (pencil)
3. Press Cmd+F (or Ctrl+F) and search for domainKey
4. Replace the placeholder value with your actual domain key from your SBOS profile
5. Click Commit changes: Vercel auto-redeploys

Update Your Domain Settings

Now that you have a live URL, you need to make three domains match:

1. Copy your Vercel domain (e.g. my-website.vercel.app)
2. Go to the OpenAI domain allowlist. Add your Vercel domain (no https://, no trailing slash), click Generate Key
3. Go back to your SBOS profile: update the domain field to your Vercel domain, and update the public domain key with the new key you just generated
4. Click Update

Important: These three domains must match exactly. Your OpenAI allowlist, your SBOS profile, and your actual Vercel domain. This is the most common source of errors.

Explore the Chat Examples

The template also includes a page with your AI receptionist laid out in different styles. Full-width, centered, different sizes, colour schemes, and a floating chat bubble. To see them:

1. Go back to your GitHub repository
2. Open chatkit-examples.html
3. Same process. Search for domainKey, replace with yours, commit
4. Visit my-website.vercel.app/chatkit-examples to see all the layout options

This is great for deciding how you want the chat to look on your actual business website.

Want a More Polished Website?

The one-click template is functional but basic. If you want a production-ready website with FAQs, testimonials, feature cards, video components, a founder letter, and proper branding, I have a premium template available as an add-on. It’s the same template I use for AnyCRM. The ChatKit integration is already built in. You just swap the domain key and it deploys the same way through Vercel. Get the premium website template →

You’re Live

Your AI receptionist is now deployed on two channels:

Both connect to the same Second Brain OS backend. When you upgrade to the booking tools, they light up on both channels simultaneously. No reconfiguration.

What’s Next

You’ve got a live AI receptionist that sounds human and knows your business. If you grabbed the full system, your next email lands tomorrow with the Calendly booking upgrade, Step 2 of 6. If you grabbed the Quickstart only, here’s the natural upgrade path whenever you’re ready:

1. Add appointment booking: your AI receptionist checks availability and books directly into your calendar. Get the booking tool →
2. Add rescheduling & cancellation: customers can move or cancel without calling you. Get rescheduling & cancellation →
3. Add service & specialist matching: the AI matches customers to the right person and service. Get service matching →

Already purchased an upgrade? Jump straight to the new steps without re-doing what you set up today: Calendly setup, Quickstart graduate path →

Each upgrade plugs into the same agent. No starting over. If you have questions, shoot me an email or post in the community. Whatever’s easier.

This is part of a Crash Course on Calendly AI Agent. Access all the Automations to build a web & voice ai receptionist for booking, rescheduling & cancelling appointments by clicking the button below

Umair Kamil

Install Calendly AI Agent