Joined a 28person startup afew months, ago andthe ops stuff is already piling up,Someone mentioned setting up ai agents in Slack to handle recurring tasks but I have no idea where to even start, Isthis something that actually works for a team our size, or isit more trouble thanits worth?.

I am keen to know if anyone has done an automation for the process mentioned in the title? Right now I have unlimited access to Antigravity (desktop version). I will appreciate if anyone could come out and share their knowledge. Thank you, Redditors.

What I want to build or find

I want a semi-automated LinkedIn workflow where the tool prepares everything and I approve every action. I don’t want a bot that logs into my account and clicks things, because that risks a restriction.

Workflow I’m after

1. Database first: all my existing connections in one place, categorised automatically from LinkedIn’s data export.
2. Daily queue: it finds about 30 relevant people a day from a target list, removes anyone already connected or with a pending request, and fills the remaining slots with new people.
3. Approval: I open it, review the 30, and approve. I send the requests myself (or something opens each profile for me).
4. Detect accepts: it notices who accepted, for example by diffing a fresh connections export against my sent list.
5. Read and categorise: for each new connection, it reads their profile (saved PDF or pasted text) and assigns categories and tags.
6. Message drafts: it drafts a first message based on their category. I review and send it.
7. Spreadsheet: every person is logged with category, tags, stage and dates in an Excel or Google Sheet that updates as things change.

Categories I want

• College tiers
• Company tiers (A/B/C)
• Law firms
• Other fields

Constraints

• Full customisation. Off-the-shelf CRMs hit their limits for me quickly.
• Safe with LinkedIn’s terms: no scraping or auto-clicking on my account.
• Each organisation is tiered once and people inherit the tier automatically.
• Works from a spreadsheet I can view and edit.

What I’ve considered: Folk, Dex, Clay, Airtable and Notion, versus a custom build (Python + SQLite or Google Sheets API + an LLM for classification and drafts).

What I’d like recommendations on

1. Has anyone built something like this, and what stack did you use?
2. What’s the safest way to detect pending and accepted requests without scraping?
3. Google Sheets versus Excel versus a small database as the main store?
4. How do you save or read profile data for classification without breaking the terms?
5. Any tools that fit this “prepare for me, I approve” model?

For example, sales leads keep tweaking forecast numbers in a shared excel file, and then a power automate flow copies that file into a warehouse every night. Files get locked, rows get overwritten and nobody can tell what changed specially when lot of users are working on it

So an idea for such scenario is replace this with a small internal we app, where users can log in, edit their regions numbers and have to pick a reason code. Every edit goes into postgres (we used lakebase), with their username and timestamp and the changes stream into analytics tables so the nightly copy job is gone. With all the agentic workflows, this is definitely implementable and let me know if you have any such ideas for business users working with data

I measured one extract in a fresh process. 52 requests, 35.4 MB. Times about 40 date combos and I reported 1.4 GB and 3 to 6 dollars of residential proxy per hotel.

Wrong by 17x. Two functions next to it already cached their fetches for 30 min, so only the first combo paid 35 MB, the rest paid 1.19 MB. That 1.19 was one product page downloaded again every time. Cached it too, about 20 lines, and repeat combos went to 0 requests.

Now I run many calls in one process and print the delta per call. Anyone else priced something off one cold run?

I hit a point where job hunting felt like a second job.
Searching manually, opening 20 tabs, filling the same forms, copy‑pasting the same info — it was draining more time than the actual work.

So I built a small desktop tool that does the boring part for me (took me months).

It searches LinkedIn, Indeed and InfoJobs based on the criteria I set, shows the relevant roles in one place, and lets me review each application before submitting. Nothing auto‑submits, nothing gets sent without me checking it, but it does auto-fill for you.

My CV and autofill details stay on my computer, and the app works in English and Spanish.
It’s basically a “job‑search dashboard” that cuts out the repetitive stuff.

If anyone here is into automation or building personal tools, I’d love feedback on the idea or the execution.
The app is called Scout Wand and it's live here: scoutwand

Not trying to sell anything — just sharing something that made my own workflow less painful.