Great question. The way I think about it: Use normal automation when the workflow is predictable. Use code when you need something custom, repeatable, connected to APIs, or reliable enough to run without babysitting. Use agents when the task needs judgment — summarizing, researching, classifying, drafting, deciding what should happen next, or routing work to the right place. For business, I think the best use is not “AI does everything.” It is: AI handles the messy thinking step. Automation handles the repeatable workflow. Humans stay in the loop where judgment matters. What kind of business workflow are you trying to improve first?

@John Fortes That makes sense — real estate is actually a great use case because so much of the work is repeatable but still needs judgment. I’m using AI mostly as an operations layer: content planning, workflow mapping, drafting follow-ups, organizing ideas, building internal tools, and helping turn messy processes into something more repeatable. For real estate, I’d probably think in 3 buckets: 1. Lead follow-up 2. Admin / transaction tasks 3. Client education and content I wouldn’t try to build one giant agent first. I’d pick one daily task that eats time and make that smoother. For you, is the biggest time drain lead follow-up, paperwork, client communication, listing content, or keeping your CRM organized?

I’ll go first: my non-negotiable is the failure path. If the automation breaks and nobody knows what happened, who owns it, or what to do next, it is not ready yet.

A couple things jump out. Your MCP connection itself looks like it is working because GHL is discovering Composio tools. The problem looks more like tool routing / scoping, not authentication. Right now GHL is seeing the generic Composio tool layer: search tools, manage connections, execute tool, wait for connections, etc. That may be why Instantly-specific tools are not showing as standalone tools. I’d check two things: 1. In Composio, confirm the Instantly connection is active for the same user/session your MCP URL is using. 2. If you want GHL to see Instantly tools directly, try creating an Instantly-scoped MCP/tool router session instead of the general Composio MCP connection. Otherwise, you may need to have the agent use the Composio search/execute tools to find and run Instantly actions dynamically. That said, for this use case, I probably would not make the AI agent “monitor” engagement. For opens/replies, I’d use Instantly webhooks as the trigger, then update GHL through a workflow/API step. Use the AI only where judgment is needed — for example, classifying a reply as interested, not interested, out of office, wrong person, etc. So the cleaner architecture is probably: Instantly event/webhook → GHL workflow/API → update contact/opportunity/tag → optional AI classification for reply content. Counting “opened 3 times” is deterministic. Reply intent is where the AI agent becomes useful. Also FYI - I’d rotate the key because it is visible in the screenshot. That key functions like a password for the MCP connection, so if it was shared publicly or with anyone who should not have access, someone could potentially use it to connect through that MCP setup. Safer move is to revoke it, generate a new one, update the GHL MCP connection, and test again.

Hey everyone, I’m Alex, based in Texas. I’m a founder/operator working pretty deeply in AI-assisted building and automation. My main goal right now is to turn the “AI can do anything” hype into real business systems that actually hold up — content workflows, internal tools, automations, and software processes that are useful after the demo. For fun, I’m usually with my family, watching sports, or testing some new AI tool and accidentally turning it into a project.

Thanks for sharing!