I read those AI newsletters every week, and honestly, half the time they pile up unread in my inbox until guilt makes me skim them on a Sunday night. So when I watched this walkthrough of Google’s brand-new Gemini Spark, my first thought was: finally, something that does the skimming for me. This breakdown comes from the creator behind the video, who got early access through the Google Ultra plan and put Spark through its paces with real demos.
What makes this fresh: Spark isn’t another chat window. It’s a personal AI agent baked into the Gemini app that runs 24/7, even when your laptop and phone are off. The Verge called it “the most impressive and terrifying AI experience” they’ve had, and after seeing the demos the original poster ran, I get why.
🔑 What’s new
Spark lives inside the Gemini app (gemini.google.com or your phone). It plugs straight into your Google world: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets, even YouTube. Other tools like ChatGPT and Claude can tap into Google, but none of them sit inside the ecosystem the way Google’s own agent does. That means it can watch your inbox, react to new Sheets, summarize subscriptions, and pull insights, all on a schedule, all in the background.
The twist: it actually touches your real accounts. Not a sandbox. Not a copy. When the creator asked it to scan his inbox, it read his actual newsletters. When he asked it to log a client, it wrote a real row in his real spreadsheet and created a real Drive folder. The agent does the chores while you’re away from the keyboard.
🛠️ The mini-workflow he demoed
- Research into content. He told Spark to scan four AI newsletters in his inbox, pull the top three recurring themes, build a Google Doc summary, and draft three LinkedIn posts. A couple of minutes later it surfaced themes like “the shift into the agent era” and “stop blaming AI for layoffs,” then turned them into post ideas. The drafts were clean, but, in his words, they didn’t sound like him yet.
- Teach it a skill. To fix the generic voice, he had Spark read his last 15 emails, build a style guide, and save it as a reusable skill called “my ghostwriter.” Skills work like saved instructions (much like Claude’s skills): teach it once, reuse it forever. It nailed his style, short micro-paragraphs, plain text, no emojis. After that, regenerating those LinkedIn posts with the skill applied was a big jump in quality.
- Put it on a schedule. This is the whole point of an always-on agent. He set a task: “Every Friday at 3 p.m., scan my newsletters from the week and send me a short recap.” Set it once, forget it, it just keeps running in the account.
- Automate inbox-to-action. He built a rule: when an email asks about his services, pull the sender’s name and date, add a row to his client tracker Sheet, and spin up a Drive folder named after them. Spark created a filter trigger, a semantic check to confirm intent, then the actions. He sent himself a test email, and it all happened automatically, new row, new folder, no clicks.
- Meeting prep on autopilot. “Look at my calendar tomorrow, for each meeting find recent emails and Drive files for that person, then build a one-page briefing with three smart questions.” It checked Calendar, found the meeting, pulled a Sheet from Drive, and produced the brief. He even followed up to have it saved as a Doc in the right folder.
💡 Pro tips from the demos
- Build skills through conversation. The creator’s favorite trick is using the “Create with Gemini” option and just talking back and forth, instead of writing a skill.md file by hand. Way easier, and Spark can pull from your existing Docs, Sheets, and Drive while it builds.
- Skills get recommendations. The skills tab suggests new ones to build, like a separate writing style for LinkedIn versus email. Train it per format for sharper output.
- Add follow-ups. He forgot to tell it to save the briefing to a folder, then just asked in the same chat. The agent handles cleanup prompts without restarting the task.
- Connect only what you need. During onboarding (or later in Spark settings) you can pick exactly which apps to grant, skip YouTube, keep Calendar, whatever fits.
⚠️ The part worth slowing down for
This is experimental, and you’re handing it a lot. Real access to your Gmail, Drive, and Calendar, plus permission to act inside them. The original poster only tests it on a secondary account, not his main one, and he’s clear that you should supervise it closely to see exactly what it’s doing. Smart caution. An agent that can write to your spreadsheet and create folders is powerful, and powerful cuts both ways.
Right now it’s Ultra-plan only and rolling out slowly, but it’ll reach everyone eventually. If you live in Google Workspace, this is the one to watch.
Want the full play-by-play with every demo on screen? Check out the original video, it’s worth the watch before you connect anything. 🚀