Which jobs to hand to AI agents first
By Simurg · · 4 min read
The short answer
Start with a job that comes back often, takes under a minute to check and is cheap to get wrong. Drafting customer replies, chasing unpaid invoices and a weekly report of your numbers are good first jobs. Leave anything that moves money or is hard to undo until later.
Four questions for any job
Run each job on your list through these. A good first job gets four yeses.
- Does it come back often? Daily or weekly work pays back the setup quickly. A job you do twice a year does not.
- Can you check the result in under a minute? You should be able to look at the work and know if it is right.
- Is a mistake cheap? A clumsy draft costs you ten seconds. A wrong refund costs you money and a customer.
- Do you already know how you want it done? If you cannot explain the job, an agent cannot do it either.
Jobs that fail one of these can still be handed over later. They should not go first.
Good first jobs
| Job | Why it works | What you check |
|---|---|---|
| Drafting replies to customer emails | Frequent, and nothing leaves until you send it | Tone and facts |
| Chasing unpaid invoices | The same job every week, with clear rules | Amounts and names |
| A weekly report of your numbers | Read only, so it cannot break anything | Whether the numbers match |
| Following up with quiet leads | Easy to forget, and a short note is enough | That the note fits the conversation |
| Turning one article into social posts | The source is yours, so the facts are too | Voice |
| A morning brief of your day | Read only, and useful from the first day | Nothing, you just read it |
If you do not know where to begin, take the job you put off the most. That is usually the one that costs you the most.
Jobs to hold back
These can all be done by agents in time, but keep them out of your first month:
- Anything that moves money. Refunds, payments, ad budgets. Let agents prepare them and you press the button.
- Anything hard to undo. Deleting records, publishing to a large email list, changing prices across your shop.
- Your most sensitive conversations. An unhappy big customer, a legal letter, a partner who is leaving.
- Work you have never written down. Do it yourself once more and take notes.
Start with reading, then writing
The safest way to begin any job is to let the agent read before it writes. For the first few days, ask it to look at the work and tell you what it would do:
Look at this week's support emails. Tell me which ones you could answer from our policies, and draft those replies. Do not send anything.
This shows you what the agent understands, what it has missed, and which facts you forgot to give it. It costs almost nothing and nothing can go wrong.
How to hand a job over
A good handover says four things, in plain words.
- The goal. What done looks like. "Every invoice more than seven days late has a reminder."
- The facts. Where to look, and what to read first. "Stripe for invoices, and our payment terms."
- The limit. What it must not do. "Never mention late fees. Do not write to anyone twice in one week."
- The proof. What it shows you. "A list of who you wrote to, and how much is owed."
If you would not hand a job to a new employee with those four things, you are not ready to hand it to an agent.
When to give it more room
Check everything at first. Then step back as the work earns it:
- Drafts only. The agent writes, and you send.
- Approve each one. It prepares the action, and you say yes or no.
- Approve the risky ones. Routine work goes through, and anything unusual waits.
- Check a sample. You read a few each week.
Move up a level after about twenty results in a row that you would not have changed. Move back down the moment something goes wrong. There is no shame in that, and most jobs do not need to reach the last level.
If the first job goes badly
It probably will, a little. First results are often too generic or miss something obvious. Before you give up, work out which kind of problem it is:
| What happened | What is usually missing | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| It sounds like a robot | Examples of your writing | Add three real ones |
| It got a fact wrong | The fact was not written down | Add it to your documents |
| It did too much | No limit was set | Add the rule |
| It stopped halfway | It could not reach an app | Check the connection and its access |
| It did the wrong job | The goal was vague | Say what done looks like |
Most failures come down to something the agent was never told. Fix that once and it stays fixed. Once your first job runs well, the full picture of running a business this way is the next read.