Calendly AI Receptionist — Setup & Configuration Guide
Hey there,
Welcome to the Calendly AI Receptionist — your virtual receptionist that handles appointment booking, rescheduling, and cancellations automatically. Before you deploy to any channel — website chat widget, voice, WhatsApp, or anything else — you need to configure your Second Brain OS account and understand the scheduling tools you now have access to.
This guide covers everything you need to do first. The channel-specific deployment guides (ChatKit for your website, ElevenLabs for voice) pick up where this one leaves off.
Step 1: Set Up Your Calendly Account
If you don’t already have a Calendly account, you’ll need one. This is where your appointment booking system actually lives — the Calendly AI Receptionist connects to it via Second Brain OS MCP.
- Go to calendly.com and sign up
- Sign in with your Google or Microsoft account — this connects your calendar automatically
- During the onboarding flow, Calendly will walk you through creating your first event type (e.g. “30-min Meeting”). Create at least one — this is what your AI agent will use to book appointments
IMPORTANT: In calendly, event types are the different types of “meetings” you offer.
For example, one could be a workshop. Another could be a 1:1 consultation. Each event has slots. People book into your slots. And you have control over how long a slot is.
For now, set up a single event (e.g 1:1 consultation) and set the slot time to 15, 30 or 60 minutes.
The smaller the slot, the more people can book. The longer the slot, the fewer people can book. The AI respects this to prevent anyone from “double booking” into the same slot.
The exception is when you have configured your event in calendly to be “1 to Many” (e.g Workshop).
This of course allows multiple people to book into a single slot (i.e they attend the workshop at the same time). Of course, you can also limit this to (for example) “no more than 10 people can book at the sametime”. This limits how many people can attend it, for first come first serve or limited seats scenario.
- Once your account is set up, you need a Personal Access Token — this is what allows Second Brain OS to talk to your Calendly account:
- Go to calendly.com/integrations/api_webhooks
- Click Generate New Token
- Give it a name (e.g. “Second Brain OS”)
- Copy the token and save it securely — you’ll need it in the next step
Step 2: Log In to Second Brain OS & Connect Calendly
- Go to secondbrainos.com and log in
- Click the “Update CRM Settings” button — this opens a modal with 3 fields:
- calendly_access_token — paste your Calendly Personal Access Token here
- crm — leave empty for now (used when connecting a CRM like HubSpot or Pipedrive)
- crm_api_key — leave empty for now
- Save — your Calendly account is now connected to Second Brain OS
Step 3: Configure Your AI Agent Settings
Navigate to your Profile → AI Agent Settings.
These settings control how your AI receptionist behaves across all channels:
- System prompt (
auto_responder_instructions) — this is the behaviour prompt that defines your AI receptionist’s personality, tone, and appointment booking logic. Write it to match your business: a friendly virtual receptionist, a professional assistant, whatever fits your brand - LLM model (
auto_responder_large_language_model) — the AI model your agent uses (e.g.gpt-5.4) - OpenAI API key (
open_ai_api_key) — required for ChatKit deployments. Get yours at platform.openai.com/api-keys - Domain — the domain where your ChatKit widget will live (must match the OpenAI domain allowlist). Required for ChatKit deployments
- Public domain key (
domain_pk_xxx) — used by ChatKit to authenticate from the browser without exposing your API key.
Configure it at platform.openai.com/settings/organization/security/domain-allowlist
Save your settings once configured.
Step 4: Understand The Core Calendly Tools
Your Calendly AI Receptionist comes with 7 scheduling tools. They break into two tiers: 4 core tools that handle the standard booking lifecycle, and 3 advanced tools for more complex scenarios.
The 4 Core Tools (Public by Default)
These are already set to public visibility and active status. They cover 90% of scheduling use cases:
getCalendlyAvailability — Fetches available time slots for your Calendly event type within a date range (up to 7 days). Returns scheduling URLs and slot times in the customer’s timezone. Rounds start times to the nearest 15-minute interval. Your agent uses this to say “I have openings at 2pm, 3:15pm, and 4:30pm — which works best?”
createCalendlyContactMeeting — The main booking tool. Creates or finds a contact and schedules a new event through the Calendly Scheduling API. All it needs are the contact’s details, timezon and the scheduled datetime. It handles everything else itself: timezone conversion, picking the correct event in Calendly and inviting the contact to the meeting. Just pass a name, email, and time — the tool handles everything else.
updateCalendlyMeeting — Reschedules an existing Calendly event. Works two ways: pass a specific calendly event id (event_uuid) directly, or pass the customer’s email and the tool automatically finds their soonest upcoming appointment. Cancels the old event and creates a new one at the specified time
Why this is great: Calendly has no direct reschedule API, so this handles the cancel-and-update seamlessly. Something that would take 20+ steps in n8n, Zapier and othr noco/loco tools!
cancelCalendlyMeeting — Cancels a scheduled event and optionallly, allows addin a cancellation reason. Abd yes, it verifies the event exists and isn’t already cancelled before proceeding. Returns cancellation details including invitee info so your agent can confirm back to the customer.
What’s Next
Your SBOS account is configured and you understand your appointment booking tools. Now pick a channel to deploy your AI receptionist to:
- Website chat widget (ChatKit) — add an AI receptionist to your website. Embed on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or any site
- Voice (ElevenLabs) — a natural voice AI receptionist that handles phone calls
- Advanced tools & multi-event setups — handle multiple appointment types, lead capture, and booking lookups
Each deployment guide assumes you’ve completed this setup guide first.
