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Lesson 1 of 8Stage 1: Plan the Agent

Choose One Job and Gather Examples

Build Your First AI Agent 12 minFree

The problem

You have an idea for an agent, but no real examples to build it from. Without them, you end up guessing what the agent should do.

You'll be able to

You'll have one clear job and five to ten real examples of that job from your own business.

Why this matters

Rosa runs an HVAC company. She picked "draft replies to new service requests" as her first agent job. Before building anything, she copied eight recent requests into a document, including a calm tune-up request and a panicked no-heat call. Those examples shaped every step that followed.

Step by step

  1. 1

    Write the job in one line

    Use the pattern: "Each time [trigger], draft [output] for [who]." For example: "Each time a web form lead comes in, draft a first reply for me to approve."

  2. 2

    Collect real examples

    Pull five to ten real cases from the last month: emails, texts, form entries or notes. Pick a mix of easy, normal and messy ones.

  3. 3

    Remove private details

    Replace names, phone numbers, addresses and account details with placeholders like [CUSTOMER] before you paste anything into an AI tool.

  4. 4

    Save your best real answers

    If you or your team already wrote a good reply to some examples, save those too. They show the agent your tone.

  5. 5

    Pick the assistant you'll use

    Any AI assistant that lets you save custom instructions, a project, or a custom agent will work. Use the one your business already pays for or trusts.

Prompt to copy

Replace the [brackets] with your details, then paste it into your AI tool.

Clean my examples
Below are real examples of [TYPE OF REQUEST] my [TYPE OF BUSINESS] received. Replace every name, phone number, email, street address and account number with placeholders like [CUSTOMER], [PHONE], [ADDRESS]. Keep everything else the same. Then sort them into easy, normal and messy, and tell me in one line what makes each messy one tricky.

[PASTE EXAMPLES]

Your exercise

Make a document called "Agent Examples" and put in at least five real, cleaned-up examples of your agent's job.

Before you call it done

  • My job is written as one line.
  • I have at least five real examples.
  • Private details are replaced with placeholders.
  • At least one example is messy or unusual.

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