Make sure the agent understands you first

A skill is a short instruction file an agent loads when a task matches. The one we use most is called Raw. It makes the agent confirm it understands us before it does any work.

Before Raw, we would give an agent our rough thoughts and it would run off and do work. It made a lot of mistakes. We couldn’t make what we wanted, and we were always a little less than happy with the output.

We built Raw in the second quarter of this year. We needed a way to confirm understanding with the agent while working. The instruction is simple: before you act on the next step, go through a process and let me confirm that you understand me.

Here is the process. We give the agent our raw thoughts. It writes them down as bullets and keeps our meaning. It says the core idea back in one or two plain sentences and asks whether that is right. Then it stops. It drafts nothing until we say yes or correct it.

The stop is what matters. We correct the agent’s understanding in one sentence, before any work exists.

Now we get the results we’re looking for. In September we completed 156 tasks with Raw, from start to finish. We have never gotten this much work done.

Raw is one example. If you work with an agent, find the place where it gets you wrong and write a skill with the agent for that.

See the skills we use most → Skills