Build an AI Secretary with Amazon Quick

Build a custom AI agent that answers questions from your team's documents.

Introduction

30 Second Summary

Every team has the same questions on repeat. Instead of digging through shared drives or messaging a coworker, imagine an AI assistant that already knows the answers from your team's own documents.

In this project, you will build a custom AI Secretary agent inside Amazon Quick that responds with a professional persona and pulls answers directly from your uploaded team documents.

What You'll Build

Picture asking your Secretary "What's our PTO policy?" and getting a concise, bullet-pointed answer pulled straight from your team's handbook, delivered in a polished executive tone.

By the end of this project, you'll have:

A custom AI Secretary agent that answers team-specific questions using your uploaded documents instead of giving generic responses.
A personal knowledge Space populated with team documents that scales your agent's knowledge beyond individual file uploads.
A polished agent with a branded welcome message and suggested prompts that guide new users from the first interaction.
Secret Mission: Build a second Meeting Prep Assistant agent with a Technical communication style to compare how different personas shape the same documents into different responses.

Are there any prerequisites?

None. You just need a web browser and an email address. Amazon Quick does not require an AWS account or a credit card to sign up.

Before We Start

Before we dive in, let's lock in what you're about to build and why it matters. You're going to create a custom AI Secretary agent inside Amazon Quick that answers your team's real questions using your actual documents.

Sign Up for Amazon Quick

To build your AI Secretary, you need a workspace where you can create and configure custom agents. Amazon Quick is that workspace. It runs entirely in your web browser and requires no downloads or installations.

In this step, you'll create your Amazon Quick account. Every new signup includes a free 30-day trial of the Plus plan, which unlocks the custom agent features you'll use throughout this project.

In this step, get ready to:

Create an Amazon Quick account using your email address.
Activate your free 30-day Plus trial.
Confirm the key navigation features on your home page.

Create your Amazon Quick account

Amazon Quick is a web-based platform for building custom AI agents. It does not require an AWS account or a credit card to get started.

Open your web browser and navigate to https://aws.com/quick.
Select the signup option on the page.
Enter your email address and follow the prompts to create your account.

Other sign-in options

You can also sign in with Google, Apple, Amazon, or GitHub. Pick whichever is most convenient for you.

Complete the onboarding flow that appears after you create your account.

Can't complete signup?

Make sure you entered a valid email address. If you're using a corporate email, try a personal email instead. If you already have an Amazon Quick account with an expired trial, you may need to upgrade to the Plus plan or sign up with a different email address.

Still stuck? Help me troubleshoot my Amazon Quick signup.

Amazon Quick automatically activates a free 30-day Plus trial for your account. This gives you full access to custom chat agents, Spaces, knowledge bases, and all other Plus features.

Why do I need the Plus plan?

Custom agent creation is a Plus feature. The Free plan does not include it.

Your 30-day trial gives you everything you need for this project at no cost. After the trial ends, the Plus plan costs $20/user/month (billed annually).

Confirm your home page navigation

After onboarding, you'll land on the Amazon Quick home page. This page is your starting point for everything you'll build in this project.

In the left navigation menu, confirm you can see Chat agents, Spaces, and Knowledge listed in the sidebar.

What are these three features?

Chat agents is where you create and manage custom AI agents. Spaces is where you organize document libraries for your agents to draw from. Knowledge is where you manage knowledge bases and data sources.

You'll use all three to build your Secretary agent in the upcoming steps.

Your Amazon Quick account is ready to go. Next up, you'll chat with the default AI agent to see what it can and can't do without any customization.

Discover the Default Agent's Limits

Your Amazon Quick account is set up and your Plus trial is active. Before building a custom agent, you need to experience the problem it solves firsthand.

The default AI assistant in Amazon Quick has no knowledge of your team or documents. In this step, you'll ask it real work questions and see what kind of answers you get without any team context.

In this step, get ready to:

Ask the default agent three work-specific questions about your team.
Observe why its generic responses fall short without access to your team's documents.

Ask the default agent about your team's PTO policy

The default agent is the AI assistant built into Amazon Quick. It can answer general knowledge questions, but it has never seen your team's handbook, company policies, or project documents.

On the Amazon Quick home page, start a new chat conversation with the default agent.

Before you type anything, consider this: do you think the default agent knows YOUR team's specific PTO policy?

Type What is our team's PTO policy? in the chat input and press Enter.

The agent responds with a generic overview of typical PTO policies. It has no idea what your team's specific policy actually says.

Why is the response generic?

The default agent only has general knowledge. It has never seen your team's handbook, company policies, or any of your internal documents.

Without that context, it can only describe what PTO policies typically look like for most companies.

Can't find where to type?

The chat input area is on the main section of the Amazon Quick home page. If you don't see it, try refreshing the page in your browser.

Where do I type my chat message in Amazon Quick?

Test with more work-specific questions

One generic response could be coincidence. Let's confirm the pattern with two more questions that a real secretary would need your team's documents to answer.

In the same chat, type Help me prepare for tomorrow's team standup meeting. and press Enter.

The response is generic advice about standup meetings. It cannot reference your team's actual meeting format, recent project updates, or agenda items.

Type Summarize our project status. and press Enter.

The agent offers a generic project status template. It has no knowledge of your projects, your team's terminology, or how your team communicates.

Review the pattern across all three responses

Look at all three responses together. What do they have in common?

Every response is generic and impersonal. The default agent cannot answer any of these questions with team-specific details because it has no access to your documents or context.

What did you just prove?

A general-purpose AI assistant gives one-size-fits-all answers to everyone. It has no way to know about your team's specific policies, projects, or preferences.

A useful AI secretary needs two things: access to your team's documents, and a persona that matches how your team communicates. That's exactly what you'll build next.

You've proven the gap. The default agent can't handle team-specific questions without your documents. In the next step, you'll create a custom Secretary agent with a professional persona and your team's actual content.

Build Your Secretary Agent

In the last step, you tested the default agent and hit a wall. Every answer was generic because the agent had no identity, no communication preferences, and no access to your team's documents.

Now you'll build a custom agent that fills all three gaps. Amazon Quick's agent builder lets you describe your ideal assistant in plain English, pick a communication style, and upload reference documents so it responds with real answers instead of guesses.

In this step, get ready to:

Create a custom chat agent using a natural language description.
Configure the agent's persona and Executive communication style.
Upload reference documents and test the agent in preview.

Create a new chat agent

Amazon Quick lets you describe the assistant you want in plain English. It takes your description and expands it into a full set of agent instructions automatically.

In the left navigation menu, select Chat agents.
Select Create chat agent.
In the text input box, enter the following description:

You are a professional executive secretary who helps team members with daily productivity tasks including meeting preparation, policy questions, and project status updates. You are organized, concise, and always provide actionable next steps.

Select Generate.

What does Generate do?

Amazon Quick takes your short description and expands it into detailed agent instructions. It fills in the persona, communication guidelines, and behavioral rules automatically.

The builder UI opens with all of these fields pre-populated for you to review and customize.

The builder UI opens with your description expanded into detailed sections. You should see the AGENT PERSONA section, a Communication style section, and more.

Don't see the builder UI?

Make sure you selected Generate after entering your description. The builder only opens once you generate the agent config.
Check that your Plus trial is still active. Custom agent creation requires the Plus plan.

Why can't I create a custom chat agent in Amazon Quick?

Configure the agent persona and communication style

The builder UI is pre-populated with generated instructions. Now you'll fine-tune the agent's identity and pick a communication style that matches a professional secretary persona.

In the AGENT PERSONA section, find the Agent identity field.
Enter a name for your agent, such as Alex, Executive Secretary.
Review the Persona instructions below to confirm they capture the secretary role you described.
Scroll down to the Communication style section.
Select the Executive preset.

The Tone, Response format, and Length fields auto-populate with instructions tailored for executive communication.

What are communication style presets?

Amazon Quick offers three presets. Executive optimizes for high-level business communication and strategic insights. Technical focuses on detailed technical explanations and problem-solving. Creative handles general-purpose interactions.

Each preset auto-populates the Tone, Response format, and Length fields. You can further customize any of these after selecting a preset.

Review the auto-populated Tone, Response format, and Length instructions.
In the Length field, replace the current text with the following:

Keep answers under 150 words and use bullet points for any list of 3 or more items.

Why customize the length?

A secretary should give you quick, scannable answers. Capping responses at 150 words and requiring bullet points for longer lists keeps your agent's replies concise and easy to act on.

Your agent now has a name in the Agent identity field and the Executive communication style applied. The Length field shows your customized instruction.

Can't find the Communication style section?

Scroll down past the AGENT PERSONA section. Communication style sits below the persona fields on the same page.

Where is the Communication style section in Amazon Quick's agent builder?

Upload reference documents and test in preview

Your agent has a persona and communication style, but it still has no access to your team's documents. Reference documents give the agent specific content to draw from when answering questions.

Scroll down to the Reference documents section.
Select Upload files.
Upload the three sample documents provided for this workshop: a Team Handbook PDF, a Meeting Notes Template, and a Weekly Project Status Report.

The uploaded files appear in the Reference documents section once the upload completes.

What happens to uploaded documents?

Amazon Quick extracts up to 100,000 characters of text from your uploaded files. The agent uses this extracted content to ground its responses in real information instead of generating generic answers.

Supported formats include .pdf, .txt, .html, .md, .csv, .doc, and .docx.

After the files finish uploading, select Update preview.

Before you test, think back to Step 2. When you asked the default agent about your PTO policy, it gave a generic answer. Do you think this custom agent will respond differently?

In the preview panel, type the following question:

What is our team's PTO policy?

This time, the agent responds with specific details pulled from the Team Handbook. Instead of generic advice, you see your team's actual PTO policy described in a professional, concise tone with bullet points.

What changed?

The default agent in Step 2 had no documents, so it could only guess. Your custom agent has three uploaded reference documents to draw from.

Combined with the Executive communication style and your 150-word length cap, the agent now delivers focused, document-grounded answers that read like they came from a real secretary.

Agent still giving generic answers?

Make sure all three documents finished uploading before you selected Update preview.
Try selecting Update preview again to refresh the agent's context.
Confirm your documents contain text that the agent can extract. Scanned images without embedded text won't be indexed.

Why is my Amazon Quick agent not using my uploaded documents?

Your Secretary agent is taking shape. It has a professional identity, speaks with an executive tone, and pulls answers from real documents. Next up, you'll create a knowledge Space to scale your agent's document library beyond the reference document limit.

Create a Knowledge Space

Your Secretary agent can now answer from the three reference documents you uploaded. It pulls real details from the Team Handbook instead of guessing.

Those reference documents are limited to 100,000 characters of extracted text. For a real-world secretary that grows with your team, you need something bigger. Amazon Quick offers Spaces, an organized document library that can hold up to 10,000 files. In this step, you will create a Space and link it to your agent.

In this step, get ready to:

Create a Space named "My Productivity Hub" in Amazon Quick.
Upload five team documents to power your agent's knowledge base.
Link the Space to your Secretary agent and launch it.

Create your Productivity Hub Space

A Space is Amazon Quick's container for organizing documents, knowledge bases, and other resources. Unlike reference documents attached directly to an agent, a Space can scale to thousands of files and be linked to multiple agents.

Open a new browser tab and return to the Amazon Quick home page.
In the left navigation menu, select Spaces.
Select Create space.
Enter My Productivity Hub as the Space name.
In the description field, enter Team documents, templates, and references for the Secretary agent.

You should see your new Space page with the name My Productivity Hub at the top. The Space is empty for now.

Upload documents to your Space

You will upload five workshop documents to this Space. Three of them are the same ones you already attached as reference documents on your agent. The other two are new: a Communication Guidelines document and a Weekly Meeting Agenda template.

Select Add knowledge to begin adding content to your Space.
From the dropdown menu, select File uploads.
Upload all five sample documents provided for this workshop: the Team Handbook PDF, Meeting Notes Template, Weekly Project Status Report, Communication Guidelines document, and Weekly Meeting Agenda template.

After the upload completes, the Space knowledge section displays all five files.

Why upload documents that are already on the agent?

Reference documents attached directly to an agent are limited to 100,000 characters total. A Space can hold up to 10,000 files and 10 GB of content.

By consolidating everything into one Space, your team can add new documents over time without touching the agent's configuration. The agent just draws from whatever is in the linked Space.

Don't see all five files?

Make sure you selected all five documents before confirming the upload. You can select Add knowledge again to upload any missing files.

Check that your files are in a supported format such as .pdf, .docx, .txt, or .md. Individual files must be under 500 MB for PDF and Word formats.

Help me troubleshoot my file uploads in Amazon Quick.

Link the Space to your Secretary agent and launch it

Your Space has the documents, but your Secretary agent does not know it exists yet. You need to link the Space as a knowledge source so the agent can draw answers from the full document library.

In the left navigation menu, select Chat agents.
Find your Secretary agent in the list.
Select the menu icon in the Actions column.
Select Edit.
Scroll down to the Knowledge sources section.
Select Link.
In the Link spaces modal, select My Productivity Hub.
Select Link.

A success message confirms the linking. Your agent can now draw from all five documents in the Space.

What changes when you link a Space?

Once linked, the agent generates responses from its LLM knowledge combined with data from the linked Space. Any documents you add to the Space later are automatically available to the agent without reconfiguring it.

Select Update preview to refresh the agent with the linked Space.
Select Launch chat agent to publish your updated agent.

What does launching do?

Until you select Launch chat agent, the agent is only available in preview mode. Launching makes it accessible from the main chat interface so you can use it in real conversations.

Time to test whether the Space linking actually works. The Communication Guidelines document is only in your Space, not in the agent's reference documents. If the agent can answer a question about communication guidelines, you will know the Space is connected.

Before you ask, predict: do you think the agent will pull specific details from the Communication Guidelines document, or give a generic answer?

In the chat interface, select your Secretary agent from the agent selector dropdown.
Ask: What are our communication guidelines?

The agent responds with specific details pulled from the Communication Guidelines document in your linked Space. No generic advice this time.

Getting a generic response instead of document-specific details?

Make sure you selected Update preview and then Launch chat agent after linking the Space. Without launching, the agent still runs the previous version.

Confirm that the Communication Guidelines document is listed in your My Productivity Hub Space. Return to Spaces in the left navigation and check the file list.

Help me troubleshoot my Amazon Quick agent not answering from linked Space documents.

Your Secretary agent is live and backed by a full document library. Next up, you will polish the experience with a welcome message and suggested prompts that make it feel like a professional tool from the first interaction.

Polish and Launch Your Secretary

Your Secretary agent can now pull answers from a growing document library in your My Productivity Hub Space. It knows your team's policies, meeting formats, and project updates.

There is one more gap to close. Right now, your agent opens to a blank chat box with no guidance. A new user has no idea what to ask or what the agent can do. Adding a welcome message and suggested prompts turns that blank box into a professional tool that guides users from the very first interaction.

In this step, get ready to:

Add a branded welcome message and suggested prompts to your Secretary agent.
Test the full end-to-end experience in the preview panel.
Launch the final version and verify it from the main chat interface.

Add a welcome message and suggested prompts

The Customization section of the agent builder is where you define what users see the moment they open a chat. A welcome message introduces the agent and a set of suggested prompts gives users one-click starting points.

In the left navigation menu, select Chat agents.
Find your Secretary agent in the list, select the menu icon in the Actions column, and select Edit.
Scroll down to the Customization section.
In the Welcome message field, enter:

Hello! I'm Alex, your Executive Secretary. I can help you with PTO policies, meeting preparation, project status updates, and more. Just ask!

In Suggested prompts, add the first conversation starter:

What is our PTO policy?

Add the second suggested prompt:

Help me prep for tomorrow's standup

Add the third suggested prompt:

Summarize our current project status

Select Update preview to load your changes into the preview panel.

Your preview panel now shows the welcome message at the top and the three suggested prompts as clickable buttons below it.

Why do suggested prompts matter?

Suggested prompts solve the blank-page problem. Most users do not know what a custom agent can do, so they either ask something too broad or give up entirely.

Each prompt you add is a one-click shortcut to a high-value answer. It teaches users what the agent is good at while giving them immediate value.

Don't see the Customization section?

The Customization section sits below the Knowledge sources section. Scroll down past your agent persona, communication style, reference documents, and knowledge sources to find it.

If you do not see it at all, confirm you are in the agent editor (not the chat view). You should have selected Edit from the Actions menu on the Chat agents page.

Help me find the Customization section in my Amazon Quick agent builder.

Test the full experience in preview

The preview panel lets you experience exactly what a user sees when they open a chat with your agent. Time to test every piece of the experience before publishing.

Confirm the welcome message displays at the top of the preview panel.
Confirm all three suggested prompts appear as clickable options below the welcome message.
Click the What is our PTO policy? prompt. The agent should respond with specific details from your Team Handbook, not generic information.
Click the Help me prep for tomorrow's standup prompt. The response should reference your meeting template and agenda documents.
Click Summarize our current project status. The agent should pull details from your Weekly Project Status Report.

Now try a free-form question that draws from multiple documents to see how the agent combines knowledge sources.

Type this question into the preview chat:

I have a meeting tomorrow and need to know our communication guidelines and the standard agenda format.

The agent should respond with details from both the Communication Guidelines document and the Weekly Meeting Agenda template. It combines information from your linked Space to give a single, coherent answer.

What makes this different from Step 2?

In Step 2, the default agent gave you generic advice about meetings and PTO policies. Now your Secretary pulls from your actual documents, responds in a professional executive tone, and uses bullet points to keep answers concise.

Same questions, completely different quality. That is the power of pairing a persona with a knowledge source.

Seeing generic responses instead of document-grounded answers?

Make sure you selected Update preview after adding the welcome message and prompts. The preview panel does not refresh automatically when you make changes.

Also confirm the My Productivity Hub Space is still linked under Knowledge sources. If it was unlinked during editing, select Link to reconnect it.

Help me troubleshoot why my Secretary agent is giving generic responses instead of using my documents.

Launch and verify your polished Secretary

The preview confirms everything works. Time to publish the final version so your Secretary agent is live and available from the main chat interface.

Select Launch chat agent to publish the final version of your Secretary.

What does launching do?

Until you select Launch chat agent, your changes only exist in the preview version. Launching publishes the updated agent so it is available from the main chat interface. The agent remains private by default until you share it.

Now open a fresh chat to experience your polished Secretary exactly as a user would.

Return to the main Amazon Quick chat interface.
Select your Secretary agent from the agent selector dropdown at the top of the chat.

Before you click a suggested prompt, think about what you expect to see. Will the response be generic advice like in Step 2, or will it draw from your uploaded documents?

Click the Help me prep for tomorrow's standup suggested prompt.

The welcome message displays at the top. All three suggested prompts appear as clickable buttons. When you click the standup prompt, the agent responds with specific details that reference your meeting template and agenda documents from your Space.

Welcome message or prompts not showing?

Make sure you selected Launch chat agent (not just Update preview). The preview and the live agent are separate. Your customizations only go live after launching.

If you launched but still see a blank chat, try starting a new conversation. The welcome message appears when you open a fresh chat, not in an existing conversation.

Help me get my launched Secretary agent to show its welcome message and suggested prompts.

Secret mission

Build a Meeting Prep Assistant

You've built one AI agent with an Executive communication style. Now create a second Meeting Prep Assistant with the Technical preset and a completely different persona. Test both agents side-by-side with the same question to see how persona and style choices transform AI output from the same documents.

Clean Up Your Resources

Decide whether to keep your resources running, pause them to come back later, or delete them entirely. This project runs on Amazon Quick's free 30-day Plus trial with no credit card required, so there are no immediate costs. After the trial ends, your account reverts to the Free plan at $0/month, but custom chat agents require the Plus plan ($20/user/month) to create or edit.

Cost warning

Your free 30-day Plus trial covers everything in this project. After the trial expires, your account automatically downgrades to the Free plan. On the Free plan, you cannot create or edit custom chat agents. If you want to continue building agents, you would need to upgrade to the Plus plan at $20/user/month.

Resources you used:

Secretary chat agent (Alex, Executive Secretary).
Meeting Prep Bot chat agent (Jordan, Meeting Prep Bot).
My Productivity Hub Space (with five uploaded documents).
Amazon Quick account (Free 30-day Plus trial).

Keep everything running

No action needed. Choose this if you are still actively building or experimenting with your agents.

Your Secretary agent and Meeting Prep Bot remain available from the chat interface.
Your My Productivity Hub Space keeps all five documents accessible.
Your Plus trial continues until it expires (30 days from signup). After that, your account reverts to the Free plan. Your agents and Space will remain in your account, but you will not be able to create or edit agents on the Free plan.

Pause - I'll come back to this later

There are no running processes or servers to stop. Your agents and Space persist in your Amazon Quick account as long as your account exists.

No action is needed to pause. Everything stays saved in your account.
Keep in mind that your Plus trial continues counting down. If you return after the trial expires, you will be on the Free plan and will need to upgrade to Plus ($20/user/month) to edit your agents.

Delete - I don't want to use this again

Remove all project resources from your Amazon Quick account. Follow these steps in order.

Delete the Secretary agent: from the left navigation menu, select Chat agents. Find Alex, Executive Secretary in the list, select the menu icon in the Actions column, and select Delete.
Delete the Meeting Prep Bot: in the same Chat agents list, find Jordan, Meeting Prep Bot. Select the menu icon in the Actions column and select Delete.
Delete the Space: from the left navigation menu, select Spaces. Find My Productivity Hub, select the menu icon in the Actions column, and select Delete. Confirm by selecting Delete in the modal. This removes all five uploaded documents from the Space.
Downgrade your plan (optional): if you want to ensure you are not charged after the trial, select your username in the navigation bar, then Manage account. Select Plan and billing, then Manage plan. Under Free, select Choose plan and follow the confirmation prompts. This downgrades your account immediately. Your data is preserved, but only the account owner retains access.

Nice Work!

Nice work! You just built a custom AI Secretary in Amazon Quick that pulls answers directly from your team's documents instead of giving generic responses.

You've learned how to:

Discovered the limits of a default AI agent, then built a custom Secretary agent in Amazon Quick with a professional persona, Executive communication style, and reference documents that ground every response in your team's actual content.
Created a personal knowledge Space and linked it to your agent, giving it a scalable document library that grows with your team.
Polished your agent with a branded welcome message and suggested prompts, creating a professional experience from the very first interaction.
Secret Mission: An optional challenge to push your agent-building skills further.

Ready to quiz yourself?