How to Use OpenClaw for Podcast Scheduling — Automate Guest

Podcast scheduling is one of those tasks that looks simple but eats your week alive. You're emailing guests, coordinating time zones, sending reminder sequences, chasing bios and headshots — and doing it all manually. OpenClaw handles all of this without you touching it.

The Core Problem

Most podcast hosts use a mix of Calendly, email, and spreadsheets to manage guests. It works until you're booking more than a few guests a month. Beyond that, things fall through the cracks. OpenClaw gives you an always-on agent that owns the whole pipeline.

Setting Up Your Podcast Scheduling Agent

First, define your agent's role in AGENTS.md:

# AGENTS.md

## Podcast Scheduler Agent
Responsible for:
- Tracking all podcast guest outreach in guests.json
- Sending scheduling links and follow-up emails
- Collecting guest info (bio, photo, social links)
- Sending pre-show reminders 48h and 2h before recording

Next, create a workspace file to track your pipeline:

# guests.json
[
  {
    "name": "Jane Smith",
    "email": "jane@example.com",
    "status": "outreach-sent",
    "topic": "AI in healthcare",
    "schedulingLink": "https://cal.com/yourpodcast",
    "recordingDate": null,
    "bioReceived": false
  }
]

The Follow-Up Workflow

Your cron job runs the follow-up sequence automatically:

openclaw cron add hex-podcast-followup \
  --schedule "0 9 * * *" \
  --prompt "Check guests.json. For any guest with status=outreach-sent and last_contact older than 3 days, draft a follow-up email. For guests with status=confirmed and recording in 48h, send a prep email. Update statuses accordingly."

The agent reads your guest tracker, figures out who needs what, and handles it. You just review the emails it drafts before they send — or set it to auto-send once you trust the templates.

Pre-Show Prep Automation

Two hours before each recording, your agent sends the guest a prep message:

openclaw cron add hex-podcast-preshow \
  --schedule "0 * * * *" \
  --prompt "Check guests.json for any recording happening in the next 2 hours with status=confirmed. If found, send the pre-show checklist email to that guest. Mark as prep-sent."

Post-Show Workflow

After recording, automate the thank-you and next steps:

• Trigger agent manually: openclaw chat "Episode with Jane Smith recorded. Update status to post-show and send thank-you + social share assets request."
• Agent updates the tracker, drafts thank-you email, and queues social posts

Integrating With Calendly

If you use Calendly, set up a webhook to notify your OpenClaw agent when a guest books:

# In your OpenClaw webhook handler
# POST /hooks/podcast-booking
# { "event": "invitee.created", "name": "...", "email": "...", "time": "..." }

# Agent receives this and adds to guests.json with status=confirmed

Now your agent knows about every booking the moment it happens and can kick off the welcome sequence immediately.

What This Actually Saves You

A podcast with 2 guests/week generates roughly 40+ individual touches per month — scheduling links, reminders, follow-ups, bio requests, thank-yous. That's 3-4 hours of admin work. OpenClaw handles all of it, consistently, without forgetting anyone.

Want the full playbook? The OpenClaw Playbook has everything — setup to scale, $9.99.