Blog

What a personal AI assistant needs from your business

By Surfing Dog ·

In September 2026 the personal AI assistant stopped being a chat window. Meta’s Muse books and buys for people in the US and Canada. OpenAI’s dots run all day on a computer of their own. Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT and Grok can all use outside services through connectors.

For a small business that means a new kind of customer: one who sends their assistant. The assistant does the searching and comparing, then books whoever it can actually book.

Here’s what it needs from you, in the order it needs it.

1. Your services and prices, written down

An assistant compares. If your prices only exist on the phone, you drop out of the comparison before it starts. List what you do, how long it takes and what it costs, even if it’s “from €40”.

2. Your real free times

“Is Saturday at 10 free?” needs a live answer. A picture of your opening hours doesn’t give one. Neither does a calendar that only you can read.

3. A door it can use

There are two kinds, and it’s worth having both:

  • An MCP server, the standard way assistants plug into a service. It can see your services and free times, and it can book, ask for a quote or order.
  • A page that answers. An assistant with a browser can fill in a form, but only if the form gives it a result: a booking, a reference, a time. A form that emails you and waits doesn’t count.

An email address alone isn’t a door. It’s a queue.

4. A clear answer, straight away

Yes, no, or here’s another time. Your rules should decide what confirms itself: a check-up when the slot is free, a table for two when you’re open. Everything unusual should wait for you, clearly marked.

5. The person’s say on anything priced

Assistants make mistakes, and so do the people giving them instructions. A priced booking or order should only bind once the person has seen its summary and confirmed it. That protects them and it protects you, because nobody can later say the agent booked something they never wanted.

6. A way to be found

Put the address of your door on your website and in your profiles. Then join the directories assistants search when someone asks for “a bike workshop near me”. Meta reviews connectors for Muse’s directory. The Surfing Dog network is an open directory with published ranking rules, where nobody can pay to move up.

7. A person for the rest

Some requests need you: the odd job, the complaint, the wedding for eighty. They should reach you as one list of what’s waiting, not as forty threads. If you already use an AI, let it work that list with you.

Where Surfing Dog Inbox fits

We built Surfing Dog Inbox to cover all seven. It’s an open-source inbox that runs on your own domain, like inbox.yourbakery.com:

  • your services, prices and free times, which assistants can read
  • a public MCP server and your own page, in your name
  • rules that answer inside your limits, and Needs you for the rest
  • a confirmation step for anything priced
  • a place in the network if you want one
  • an owner connection for your own AI

The software is free, with nothing held back for a paid tier. On a server you already run it costs nothing extra.

Which assistants can use it today

Each has its own page with the steps:

Muse and dots started in North America. In the UK and Europe, customers already book through the others, and visitors bring their own.

Try it

Ask your AI to book a service at our demo bike workshop: surfingdog.ai/try. Then open surfingdog.ai/install and paste the one line there into your AI to set up your own.