Guides ElevenLabs published feb 24, 2026
In this guide, you’ll build an AI personal assistant that you can call from your phone. It will know your calendar, your business, and any additional context you add to its knowledge base. The setup takes about 10 minutes and costs $0 to test.
You’ll create a personal AI phone assistant powered by ElevenLabs that answers calls, uses your calendar and business context, and can later be extended with tools like webhooks and automations.
The knowledge base is static, so use it for information that does not change often. For dynamic data like live calendar events, use webhooks.
Sign in to ElevenLabs and go to the Agents section.
Pick a voice. Browse the voice library, filter by language, gender, and age, preview a few options, and choose one that fits.
Pro tip: If the default voice speed feels slow, bump it up slightly in the voice settings.
Review the system prompt. The personal assistant template comes with a solid default. Update your time zone and customize the first message to your liking.
Add to the knowledge base. This is what makes your assistant actually useful:
Hit Publish when you’re done.
Pro tip: The knowledge base is static, so it is best for things that do not change often, such as your offerings, brand info, and current projects. For dynamic data like live calendar events, use the webhook approach in the Going Further section.
Go to twilio.com and create a new account. Twilio gives you $15 in free credits. A phone number costs about $1 to buy and $1/month to keep.
Pro tip: During the free trial, callers will hear a short Twilio message before connecting. It goes away once you upgrade to pay-as-you-go, which is fractions of a cent per minute.
Go back to ElevenLabs. In the sidebar, find Phone Numbers and click Import Number from Twilio.
That’s it. Your agent now has a real phone number. Call it and start talking. On a free Twilio account, it will make you hit the keypad to connect to your agent. If you upgrade, this will go away.
Once the basic assistant is working, you can make it much more powerful by adding tools.
Here are the system tools you can install:
You can also add integrations from your agent by going to Add Tool → Integration. Your options include:
With webhooks, your assistant can pull live calendar events, schedule meetings, check your email, or look up client info, all triggered by a phone call. If you’ve taken any of the Rundown automation workshops, this is a natural next step.
Keep going
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