Ask Nell is a personal assistant that works across your email, calendar, and tasks. She reads your inbox, knows your schedule, remembers the people in your life, and helps with day to day communication and planning. Everything she does is grounded in your own data, organised in one place.
This guide walks through setup and the first few things worth trying once you're in.
Creating your account
Head to the app and create an account with your email address and a password. You'll get a verification email; click the link to confirm your address and you're in.
Choosing a plan
After signing in for the first time, you'll land on the Welcome page. The first step is picking a plan.
Every plan includes the full assistant: email, calendar, briefings, chat, and tasks. Plans differ in how many email accounts and calendars can be connected, whether voice conversations are available, and how many assistant actions are included each month. There's nothing to configure on the AI side; model selection and routing happen in the background based on the complexity of each request.
If a trial is available, it starts when the plan is selected and no charge is made until the trial period ends. Plans can be changed or cancelled at any time from Settings.
Connecting your accounts
Once a plan is active, the Welcome page moves to the connection step. This is where email and calendar accounts are linked so the assistant has something to work with.
Google brings in Gmail and Google Calendar in one click. Sign in with Google, grant access, and both are connected.
Microsoft covers Outlook mail and calendar, both personal (hotmail.com, outlook.com) and work or school Microsoft 365 accounts.
IMAP works for Fastmail, iCloud Mail, self-hosted, and any other provider that supports IMAP. Use an app password where the provider offers one.
CalDAV adds Apple Calendar (iCloud), Fastmail, Nextcloud, Synology, or any CalDAV server. For iCloud, the server is https://caldav.icloud.com, the username is your Apple ID email, and an app-specific password from appleid.apple.com is needed (the normal Apple password won't work).
Connecting can be done now or skipped and handled later in Settings. More accounts can be added at any time.
Meeting Nell
The last step of Welcome is a short conversation with the assistant. This is a good time to ask anything about how the app works, mention preferences ("I like short emails" or "always sign off as Sam"), or get help with something right away.
From here, the app opens to Mission Control.
What to try first
Read the briefing. If accounts were connected during setup, the assistant has already pulled in recent mail, calendar events, and tasks. The briefing on Mission Control is a ranked summary of what needs attention, shaped around the people who matter rather than raw chronological order.
Ask a question in chat. The chat box on Mission Control (and the Chat tab) connects to the same assistant. Try something like "What's new in my inbox?" or "Am I free Thursday afternoon?" and the assistant pulls the answer from connected accounts.
Check the inbox. The Mail tab shows synced email. Messages can be read, replied to, archived, snoozed, or forwarded. The assistant can draft replies; nothing is ever sent without approval on the Approvals page.
Look at the calendar. The Calendar tab shows the week view with events from all connected calendars. Free windows are highlighted. The assistant can book, move, or find time for meetings and blocks.
Explore the people board. The People tab builds itself automatically from email and calendar interactions. Contacts are ranked by relationship warmth, not alphabetically, with cooling connections surfaced first so nothing goes quiet by accident.
How the assistant works
A few things worth knowing about how Nell operates:
One conversation, every surface. Whether chatting on Mission Control, in the Mail tab, or on the Calendar page, the assistant is the same thread. Context carries across, and "New chat" starts a fresh thread that stays in the History.
Draft and approve. The assistant never sends email directly. Any email she composes goes to the Approvals page, where the full draft can be reviewed, edited, and then approved or rejected. Nothing leaves the outbox without explicit approval.
Your data stays yours. Everything the assistant organises lives in a markdown vault. Emails, calendar events, tasks, and notes are stored as individual markdown files with structured frontmatter. The vault can be downloaded and opened in Obsidian from Settings.
Automatic sync. Connected accounts are synced in the background on a configurable interval (default every 15 minutes). The briefing regenerates after each sync. "Sync now" is available on any page that shows synced data.
Next steps
- Mission Control and the briefing covers the home page, how the briefing works, and what the dashboard shows.
- Chat and voice explains the full chat experience, including voice conversations.
- Settings covers connections, sync frequency, writing style, standing instructions, and account security.