There is a wave of tools promising to be your "AI assistant." Most executive assistants do not need all of them. You need a few sharp ones that remove real work. Here is how I think about the categories, judged on real weekly use, not demos.
Scheduling and calendar
Tools like Reclaim, Motion, and Clockwise automatically defend focus time, buffer between meetings, and reschedule flexible tasks around fixed ones. If your calendar is your biggest drain, this is the category to start with.
Meeting notes
Meeting assistants such as Otter, Fireflies, and Fathom record, transcribe, and summarize, so you can actually listen instead of scribbling. Pair one with a prompt that pulls action items and you walk out of every call organized.
Writing and thinking
ChatGPT and Claude are the daily drivers for drafting, summarizing, and reformatting. They are good at different things: reach for speed and a big ecosystem on one side, and long, careful, voice-sensitive work on the other. Neither replaces your judgment; they draft, you decide.
Automation glue
Zapier and Make connect your tools so routine handoffs happen on their own: a form logs a request, a file files itself, a report assembles on a schedule. No code required.
How to choose
Do not adopt seven tools this month. Pick the one category that steals the most of your time, learn one tool in it well, and only then add the next. Depth beats a crowded toolbar.
The honest conclusion after testing a lot of these: the best "AI executive assistant" is still you, with a few reliable tools and the judgment to use them well. No app has replaced that, and none is close.