Build a text concierge for a bounded coordination task by keeping business records in Airtable, routing messages through Twilio and n8n, and giving the agent narrow tools for identity, availability, matching, consent, and reservations.
Source episode · 25:18
How I AI: Building a Real-World Business with Andrew Mason & Nabil Hyattwith Claire Vo
Andrew shows a text based game concierge built from Airtable, n8n, and Twilio: a message identifies the member, an agent uses narrowly described Airtable tools to find preferences and availability, recruits a quorum, and creates a reservation only when the matching conditions are satisfied.
A testable SMS concierge that identifies users, gathers constraints, contacts only eligible opted in members, forms one group safely, creates one valid reservation, and leaves an auditable record of every message and tool action.
Step by step
Follow the sequence once, then adapt the prompts, checks, and handoffs to your own setup.
6 steps
Define the exact coordination job, state machine, identities, consent, quorum, capacity, booking rules, timeouts, cancellations, and operator handoff. Keep Airtable as the readable source of truth for this bounded service.
Create Airtable tables for members, consent, preferences, availability, games, tables, requests, candidate groups, messages, and reservations. Use stable IDs, explicit statuses, timestamps, and protected fields instead of relying on free text for critical rules.
Build the n8n workflow as explicit stages: receive and deduplicate, identify, authorize, parse, validate, plan, execute tools, confirm, and log. Add retries and a failure path for each external service.
Expose small Airtable tools such as get member, find eligible candidates, propose group, reserve table, and record consent. Validate every argument and authorization on the server, and make mutating calls idempotent.
Write the system prompt around the state machine and tool contracts. Tell the agent what it may say, what it may reveal, when it must ask a question, and when it must stop or hand off.
You coordinate [bounded service] by SMS. Follow the recorded state and use only the provided tools. Before outreach, confirm identity, active consent, availability, eligibility, and capacity. Do not reveal members to one another before each confirms. Never invent records or claim a reservation before the tool succeeds. On ambiguity, conflict, opt out, or tool failure, stop the action and follow [handoff path].
Connect Twilio with signed webhook validation, consent and opt out handling, rate limits, quiet hours, message templates, and delivery callbacks. Test unknown users, duplicate texts, concurrent requests, rejection, timeout, cancellation, provider failure, and successful booking before inviting customers.
Hey, can you set up a game for me anytime this weekend? Maybe a deck building game.
Turn an idea into a PRD, user stories, and a plan.
After the steps
How to recover when the loop fails and where human judgment helps.
Recover
Keep building
Log your workouts effortlessly without ever opening a spreadsheet. This workflow uses the Claude mobile app to parse a simple voice note and automatically update your workout tracking spreadsheet in the background.
Create a custom email management interface within Claude to read, triage, and draft replies without opening the Gmail tab. This workflow helps you reclaim focus and compound your learnings by training your AI on every interaction.
Build a fully automated system in Claude to generate personalized, interactive HTML proposals and client onboarding materials, saving hours on administrative work and creating a high-touch experience.
Join 100,000+ product managers who use ChatPRD to write better docs, align teams faster, and build products users love.