docsusing bots well

tips for using bots

the habits that turn a bot from a chat window into a teammate. short, with examples.

bots are only as good as what you hand them. none of this is required, but people who get the most out of dusk bot do most of it.

1. one bot, one job

a researcher, an inbox helper, a bookkeeper. a bot with one job gets better at it, builds the right memory, and is easy to check on. a bot that does everything does nothing well.

bot	its job
researcher	reads the 40 tabs so you don't. comes back with sources and a straight answer.
inbox helper	reads what came in overnight, drafts replies in your voice, puts what needs you on top.
bookkeeper	matches receipts to charges and tells you when a subscription got pricier.
social writer	drafts the week's posts from what you shipped. posts nothing until you say so.

start with one. hire the second when the first is earning its keep.

2. write the job like a note to a new hire

say what it does, what "done" looks like, and what it must never do.

vague"help me with email."

clear"every morning, read my inbox. draft replies to anything from clients, in my voice, short. put what needs me at the top. never send anything yourself."

3. give your first message a goal, the context and a shape

the bot can't read your mind. three things make almost any request land: what you want, what it needs to know, and how you want the answer.

vague"look into competitors."

clear"find the five closest competitors to our invoicing app. for each: price, who it's for, one thing they do better than us. a table, then two lines on what we should copy."

4. hand it the thing, not a description of it

drop the pdf, the screenshot, the spreadsheet straight into the chat. a bot reading the real file beats a bot guessing from your summary. see files and apps.

5. steer, don't start over

you don't have to wait for a bot to finish. send another message while it works and it adjusts. heading the wrong way? press ⌘. to stop it, say what you meant, and carry on in the same chat so it keeps what it already learned.

6. let it ask at first, then loosen up

keep a new bot on Ask for approval for a few days, so it checks with you before running commands, changing files or sending anything. read the cards, and once you trust a bot with a kind of task, allow it. see a bot's computer.

7. tell it once, and it remembers

"i only fly aisle." "dana signs off on anything over €500." a bot writes things like that into its memory and uses them next month. things every bot should know about you (your name, time zone, how you like to be written to) go in About me in settings.

8. if you ask twice, make it a routine

anything you find yourself asking again is a routine waiting to happen. just say it:

once"what's on my calendar tomorrow?"

routine"every weekday at 7, tell me what's on my calendar and flag anything that clashes."

9. when work passes between jobs, use a group chat

put the researcher, the writer and the reviewer in one group chat and they hand work to each other with @mentions. you step in when one of them needs a yes.

10. check the first few runs

read what a new bot or routine does the first few times, and correct it right in the chat ("shorter", "skip newsletters", "always include the link"). it learns fast, and after a week you'll only glance.

11. move to dusk cloud when bots become part of your day

if a routine missed because your laptop was asleep, or you want to text a bot from your phone at night, that's the sign. dusk cloud keeps your bots on around the clock, with nothing to look after.

stuck? write to [email protected] and a person answers.