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The agent asks you questions when your description leaves gaps. That works, but it costs you a round trip every time. Answer those questions up front and the agent goes straight to building. This page covers what to put in that first message. One rule explains most of it. You own what the job is. The agent owns how it gets done. So tell it the outcome you want, hand over the access it needs, and let it pick the tools. You never have to say which API to call or where to store anything.

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Say what you want out of it

This is the big one. Most weak prompts name a task and stop, which leaves the agent guessing at what a good result looks like. Compare these two.
Both ask for a summary. Only the second one tells the agent what the summary is for, so only the second one can come back with the right summary. The first one gets you a list of commits, which is technically correct and useless. Try finishing your sentence with “so that I can.” If you cannot finish it, you have not said your intent yet.

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Logins and tokens

Ask yourself which service the job needs, then check its settings page for a personal API token. Most services have one. GitHub, Stripe, Linear, Notion, and Airtable all do. Give the agent a token instead of your password whenever you can. A token does not expire when you change your password, it never trips two-factor, and it lets the agent skip driving a browser through a login screen, which is slower and breaks more often. Paste the token right in the chat when you have it. The agent saves it to a locked file in your workspace and reads it only when a run needs it. It never puts your token into the app itself.
Check our Integrations first. If we already support the service you need, connect it there instead of pasting a token. We manage those credentials for you, which makes them both safer and steadier: your long-lived credential never reaches your workspace, and we refresh it before it expires so your automation does not break one morning.

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Correct it as it goes

You will not get everything into the first message, and you do not have to. Watch the first few runs and say what is off.
Too long. Three bullets, not ten.
You marked that one urgent. It was not, because they are on the free plan.
The agent writes each correction into its memory in that workspace, so it carries forward. See It learns from your corrections.

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Before you hit send

Quick check

  • Did I say what the result is for, not just what to do?
  • Did I include the token or say which account to use?