u/Bright_Task4758

I’ve accumulated a pretty large library of videos that constantly need the same kinds of processing format conversion, compression, thumbnail generation, basic organization, etc. Doing everything manually is becoming a massive time sink.

I’ve looked into a few automation tools and workflows, but a lot of them either feel unnecessarily complicated or way too expensive for relatively straightforward tasks.

Curious what people here are using to handle this efficiently. Are you relying on scripts, self-hosted tools, cloud workflows, no-code setups, or something else entirely?

Main priorities are:

• keeping costs low
• reducing manual work
• avoiding overly technical setups
• handling batches reliably

Would love to hear what’s actually worked for you in real-world use.

I usually think about automation as connecting apps with Zapier or n8n, but a lot of SaaS infrastructure can also be automated instead of maintained manually.

Some useful examples:

Better Uptime: Monitors websites and alerts you when something goes down.

Inngest: Runs background jobs and handles retries when a step fails.

Resend: Automates transactional emails and provides delivery events through webhooks.

Domainee: Automates custom-domain setup for SaaS products. Users connect their domain, while SSL provisioning, certificate renewals and DNS monitoring are handled in the background.

Sentry: Automatically captures application errors instead of waiting for users to report them.

GitHub Actions: Useful for automating tests, builds and deployments whenever code changes.

PostHog: Automatically collects product usage data and session recordings once it is set up.

The best infrastructure automation is usually the stuff nobody notices because it keeps working without someone checking it every day.

What part of your product are you still managing manually?

I’ve been using ChatGPT for a lot of admin stuff lately, mostly drafting emails, summarizing notes, and helping me think through follow ups. It’s useful, but I’m realizing it still needs me to drive everything.

I’m looking for something closer to an actual executive assistant tool. Things like inbox triage, calendar help, meeting notes, reminders, follow ups, maybe even basic task management without me having to copy paste everything back and forth.

I’ve seen names like Reclaim, Superhuman, Marblism, Copilot and a few AI agent tools come up, but it’s hard to tell what’s actually useful vs just another chatbot with a different interface.

Anyone here paying for an executive assistant tool other than ChatGPT? What has actually saved you time?