Putting an agent on a task

Chat is for back-and-forth. A task is for a piece of work an agent can pick up, finish and report on, and the task keeps the record of what was done.

This article covers running a task now or once. For repeating work, see Scheduling an agent.

Give the task to an agent

Open a task in any project. In the task panel, click Assignee. The list has two groups, People and AI Agents, with Claos first among the agents. Pick an agent.

A task has one assignee: a person or an agent. If your work is "the agent drafts, a person reviews", make two tasks and assign each step to whoever does it.

What changes when an agent is the assignee

A Frequency control appears in the task panel, and Due date is hidden, because the schedule decides when the work happens. Frequency offers:

• Run now, to do it straight away.
• Run once, to do it once at a date and time you pick.
• Hourly, Daily, Weekdays, Weekly or Monthly, to repeat it. See Scheduling an agent.
• Paused, to stop it without losing the schedule.

Setting a task up

Before a task's first run, its agent can set it up with you in a short chat. It asks a few questions about the job, such as what each run should do and what it should start from, then proposes a plan on a card: what each run does, where the results are saved, what it adds to start, when it runs and who does it. Press Set it up to build it, or Change something and say what to change.

• A task from a template starts with one button, Activate, which opens that chat. Run now appears once the task is set up.
• A task you typed has Set up beside Run now. Set up opens the chat with Claos, which picks a page or a database for the results and suggests who should do the work. Run now runs it as it is.
• Once a task is set up, or has run once, the button reads Ask with the agent's name. Ask opens a chat about changing the task.

A page suits a task that writes one piece each run, such as a weekly digest. A database suits a task that keeps track of many things of one kind, such as guests or prices by day: each run adds or updates rows, short facts go in properties, and anything longer goes on the row's own page.

Run it now

Set Frequency to Run now. A Run button appears at the top of the task panel. Press it and you'll see "Agent started working".

The agent works from the task: its title and description, and any files and pages attached to it.

Run it once, later

Set Frequency to Run once and pick a date and time under Run at. The agent does the work then, once. Good for "draft Tuesday's update on Monday at 5 pm".

While it works, and after

• In the task. The task panel shows what the agent is doing step by step, with controls to pause or cancel. When it finishes, the result is in the task: the agent usually writes its answer into the description and moves the task's status.
• In your inbox. A note arrives when the run is done, with View Chat to open the full run.
• In the Knowledge Base. Pages the agent writes are saved there, in the Artifacts folder unless its instructions say otherwise.

When it needs your approval

If the agent wants to do something sensitive with a connected app, such as sending an email, it pauses and asks first. You approve or deny it in the run's conversation. See Approvals and sensitive actions.

Tips

• Write the task as you'd brief a colleague. A clear title and a description that says what "done" looks like get better results than a one-word title.
• Attach the files and pages the agent needs to the task itself.
• A task given to Claos runs with Claos's general knowledge of your workspace.

Related

• Scheduling an agent
• Reading agent runs
• Chatting with an agent
• Tasks as work-orders