I Built a Zapier AI News Agent: Here’s What Happened

Originally published

Everyone is pushing the term “AI Agent,” promising it will book your flights and email your clients. I’m here to tell you: We are nowhere close to that. Marketing kills everything.

But Zapier is in a unique position to be “more agent-like”. I decided to test its new AI Agent feature to see if it delivers on any realistic promise.

Watch as I build my Daily Automation News Agent:

  • The goal: Get daily, scannable updates on Zapier, its competitors (Make, N8N, IFTTT), and major outages, delivered to a Google Doc and Slack.
  • The build: It took “shockingly little effort”.
  • The results: A comprehensive news digest that includes product updates and, crucially, links to the primary source for every story.

This feature is a powerful example of AI’s best core use: crunching data and surfacing relevant information in a manageable way. It proves that while agents may lack “autonomy” or “intelligence” in the way some claim , they excel at specific, prompt-driven tasks.

Want more automations and systems tips delivered right to your inbox? Subscribe for free at https://casabona.org/youtube