Contact Sales

All fields are required

Developers

Build an AI Personal Assistant With Appointment Scheduling

Introducing Ethan: An AI personal assistant app

Start for free Talk to an Expert
Dani Plicka

Personal digital assistants used to mean a Palm Pilot in your pocket. Today, a real AI personal assistant means something far more capable: a system that answers calls, manages schedules, searches knowledge bases, reads emails, and handles other daily operations for you.

This post goes over our example of that system: an open-source voice AI agent built on the SignalWire Agents SDK, designed for developers who want to deploy a fully functional, configurable personal assistant AI without building every integration from scratch.

Introducing Ethan: An AI Personal Assistant App

Ethan is a Python-based AI voice assistant that handles inbound phone calls, call routing, appointment booking, and other tasks. It's not a chatbot or a phone tree, but an AI voice assistant that conducts real conversations, executes real actions, and integrates with the tools your users already rely on.

This is a personal assistant AI that runs on a phone number. So when someone calls, Ethan answers, identifies the caller, understands their intent, and takes action.

Stack:

  • SignalWire Agents SDK: voice AI infrastructure and SWAIG function execution

  • FastAPI: web server and admin API

  • Google APIs: Calendar, Gmail, and Contacts via OAuth2

  • SQLAlchemy: database layer (SQLite default, PostgreSQL supported)

  • RAG knowledge base: SQLite or pgvector backend for document search

View the repo on GitHub to to get everything you need to build your own.

AI appointment scheduling, email management, and more: What Ethan handles

Customer mode vs. owner mode

This example supports two distinct user flows depending on who's calling, making decisions based on the split between customer-facing and owner-facing behavior.

Customer mode: What any inbound caller experiences.

  • Book, check, or cancel an appointment

  • Get business hours, location, services, pricing

  • Search FAQs and knowledge base

  • Leave a message or send an email

  • Transfer to the owner

Owner mode: Activated when the owner calls from their registered number.

  • Status briefing: unread emails, pending messages, upcoming appointments

  • Full inbox management via Gmail

  • Contact lookup by name or phone

  • Message review and deletion

  • Calendar management including invite responses

This pattern is directly applicable to any use case where a single AI assistant needs to behave differently depending on who's interacting with it.


AI appointment scheduling

Ethan connects directly to Google Calendar to handle the full appointment lifecycle over the phone. Callers can book a new appointment, check an existing one, or cancel, and the calendar updates in real time without a scheduling widget or any back-and-forth email thread.

This makes Ethan a practical foundation for any AI appointment scheduling solution where the interaction happens over voice rather than a web form.

Available SignalWire AI Gateway (SWAIG) functions:

  • check_calendar_availability: query open slots by date

  • book_appointment: create a confirmed calendar event

  • cancel_appointment: remove an existing booking

  • update_appointment: modify time or details (owner mode)

  • respond_to_invite: RSVP to calendar invites (owner mode)


AI email management

Ethan reads, archives, deletes, and responds to emails via Gmail all through voice. For the business owner calling in from their registered number, Ethan switches into a privileged mode and can give a full inbox briefing on demand.

Functions include:

  • send_email: Send email

  • email_owner: Email the business owner

Which allow callers to contact the business owner without having to track down an email address.

Meanwhile, functions like

  • delete_email: Delete email (owner only)

  • mark_email_read: Mark as read (owner only)

  • archive_email: Archive email (owner only)

Allow the owner to manage email through Ethan.


Inbound call handling

Ethan is the first point of contact for every incoming call. It identifies returning callers via Google Contacts, routes owner vs. customer calls into separate flows, and transfers to a live person when needed. It can also take and log messages when the owner is unavailable.

Knowledge base & FAQ search

Upload documents to Ethan's RAG knowledge base powered by the SignalWire Datasphere API. When a caller asks a question the FAQ doesn't cover, Ethan runs a similarity search across indexed documents and synthesizes a response. This is what separates a real AI personal assistant app from a basic phone menu.


Multi-tenant support

Ethan supports multiple businesses on separate phone numbers from a single deployment. Each tenant has its own configuration, business hours, FAQs, Google integration, and knowledge base, all managed through a web dashboard.

Get started with your own AI personal assistant app

Ethan is open source and built to be extended. The core agent is in agent.py, integrations live in the services/ directory, and the admin panel is a FastAPI app with Jinja2 templates.

Clone the repo, configure your .env, point a SignalWire phone number at the webhook, and Ethan is live.

Full setup documentation, including Google OAuth configuration, SignalWire phone number setup, and deployment options for Docker, Heroku, and cloud VMs, is in the GitHub repo. As you’re building, chat with fellow developers and get assistance from our team of experts in our community Discord.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI personal assistant app?

An AI personal assistant app is software that uses artificial intelligence to handle tasks typically done by a human assistant: scheduling, communication, information retrieval, and coordination. Ethan is a voice-based AI personal assistant app that operates over a phone number.

What is a personal digital assistant and how is this example different?

Traditional personal digital assistants were handheld devices for organizing contacts and calendars. Modern AI personal assistants like Ethan are software agents that actively handle tasks: answering calls, booking appointments, reading emails, rather than just storing information.

Can I use Ethan as an AI assistant for personal use?

Yes. While Ethan is designed for small business deployments, its architecture supports single-user configurations. The owner mode, in particular, functions as a fully capable personal assistant AI, managing your calendar, email, and contacts through a phone call.

What infrastructure does the Ethan AI personal assistant example require?

Ethan requires Python 3.10+, a SignalWire account, a Google Cloud project with OAuth credentials, and a publicly accessible URL for webhooks. It runs on any platform that supports Python, local, Docker, Heroku, Railway, Fly.io, or a VM.

Does this AI voice assistant support multiple businesses?

Yes. Ethan is multi-tenant. Multiple businesses can run on separate phone numbers from a single deployment, each with isolated configuration, hours, FAQs, and Google integrations.

Related Articles