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Set up a Zaru assistant that handles your email and calendar with approvals

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Disclosure: Zaru is built by 100monkeys AI, Inc., so read this guide as a maker's account. It was drafted by one of our AI agents from the wording on this site and reviewed by the company. We did not walk a new account through these screens for this guide; where the site does not say what a screen looks like, we say so rather than describe it.

Zaru handles your email, calendar and web research. You watch each step as it happens, and by default nothing gets sent until you say yes. This guide sets it up for the two jobs where that yes matters most: your inbox and your calendar.

Why approvals, for email and calendar

An assistant that drafts is useful. An assistant that sends without asking is a risk, because a sent email and a moved meeting cannot be taken back. Zaru is built around the line between the two: in the site's words, "Anything that sends a message or changes your calendar waits for your yes." Reading, sorting and drafting happen on their own; the send waits for you.

Step 1. Create a free account

Press Get Zaru free on myzaru.com. It opens the sign-in page, where you can sign in with Google or register with an email address. The Register form asks for your email and, optionally, your first and last name. The site puts it simply: "Free plan. No card. Just your name and email." Zaru is in beta, and anyone who registers gets the Free plan right away. The Free plan costs nothing and has no time limit; the plans page lists what the paid plans add.

What follows the Register button, such as a confirmation email or the first screen, is not described on this site, so we do not describe it here.

Step 2. Tell Zaru who you are

Zaru saves what matters about you as you talk: how you write, what you care about, what you keep explaining. You do not have to wait for it to learn. Open Settings > Memory and write a few lines yourself, for example:

You can return to Settings > Memory at any time "to read every word of it, change it, or start over." Check it after the first week; it is where a wrong assumption about you would show.

Step 3. Connect your email and calendar

Connect your email account and your calendar from inside the app. Once connected, Zaru "reads, drafts and plans in them." This site does not name the settings screen or list which providers are supported, so follow the app's own prompts for the connection.

Step 4. Give it a first inbox task, and watch

Start small and specific. In the chat, ask something like:

Go through today's unread email. Tell me which three need a reply from me, and draft a reply to each.

As Zaru works, "each step appears in the chat as Zaru takes it, in plain words": which messages it read, what it decided, what it drafted. This is the point of watching the first run closely. If it misread a sender's importance, correct it in the chat or in Settings > Memory, and the next run starts from the correction.

Step 5. Approve, edit or decline the send

When a draft is ready to go, Zaru stops and asks. Nothing is sent until you say yes. Read the draft as it will be sent. If it is right, approve it. If it needs a change, say what to change and let Zaru redraft, then read the new version before you approve it. If it should not go at all, decline.

Approve one message at a time while you are getting to know it. The approval is only worth something if you read what you are approving.

Step 6. Do the same with your calendar

Zaru plans in your calendar as well as your inbox. Try:

Find a 30-minute slot with Sam next week that avoids my mornings, and propose it.

You watch each step in the chat as it goes. Creating or moving the event is a change to your calendar, so it waits for your yes, the same as an email.

Step 7. Put a daily job on a schedule

Once a task works well by hand, schedule it. Zaru runs scheduled workflows, for example a morning pass over the inbox on weekdays. A scheduled run "runs as you, and anything it would send still asks for your yes, just as in the chat." You come back to drafts waiting for approval, not to messages already sent.

Step 8. Optional: reach the same Zaru from your editor

If you work in Claude Code, Cursor or another MCP client, "Connect Zaru's MCP server to Claude Code, Cursor or any MCP client, type zaru init, and you are talking to the same companion, with the same memory, from your editor."

A note on "by default"

Approval before sending is how Zaru behaves by default, and it is the setting this guide assumes. Before you rely on it, send yourself a test: ask Zaru to email you, and confirm it stops and asks before the message leaves.

What is open, and what is not

The Zaru harness, zaru-cli, is open source under Apache-2.0, and the AEGIS Orchestrator underneath it is open source under AGPL-3.0. The web app at ask.myzaru.com is not open source.

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