This guide follows one small job from start to finish: a monthly update email to customers. The same steps work for any job you do more than once.

The four steps at a glance

Write the profile
Tell Acme who the work is for and how it should sound. You do this once per project.
Brief the assistant
Describe the job in four lines: what it is, what it must say, how long, what to avoid.
Review before you send
Check names, dates and promises against your own records.
Save it as a workflow
Keep the brief and the steps, and next month supply only what changed.

The sections below go through each step in detail.

Step 1: Write the profile

Open the project and choose Profile. Paste your website address or describe the business in a few lines. For the example we wrote:

A small studio that repairs and restores wooden furniture. Customers are mostly homeowners within an hour’s drive. Friendly, plain, a little dry. Never use exclamation marks.

Acme returns a profile with a voice, an audience and a few sample sentences. Read it once. If a detail is wrong — a service you no longer offer, a tone you do not like — say so and it is corrected.

Step 2: Brief the assistant

In a new conversation, describe the job as you would to a colleague. A good brief answers four questions:

What is it? A monthly email to existing customers.
What must it say? New opening hours from next month, two finished projects, a reminder about winter bookings.
How long? Under 200 words, three short paragraphs.
What must it avoid? Discounts, and any promise about delivery dates.

The same brief, written as you would type it into the message box:

Monthly email to existing customers.
Must say: new opening hours from 1 November; two finished projects (an oak table, a pair of chairs); book winter repairs early.
Under 200 words, three short paragraphs.
No discounts, no promises about delivery dates.

The first draft usually lands close. Ask for changes in plain words: “make the second paragraph shorter”, “open with the opening hours”.

Corrections can become rules

If you make the same correction every month, choose Save to profile when you make it. The next draft will already follow it.

Step 3: Review before you send

Every draft in Acme keeps the brief next to it, so you can check the result against what you asked for. Before sending, check three things:

names, dates and numbers against your own records
that nothing promises more than you can deliver
that it sounds like you when read aloud

A small wooden staircase of four steps, on an orange background — The same four-step rhythm works for any repeated job: set the goal, pick the workflow, run it, decide

Step 4: Save it as a workflow

When the email is right, choose Save as workflow. Acme keeps the brief and the steps, and next month you only supply the details that changed. Workflows are covered in full on the Workflows page.

A saved workflow can also be started from your own code. The request below runs it with this month’s details:

curl -s -X POST "https://api.example.com/v1/workflows/wf_monthly_update/runs" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACME_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"inputs": {"month": "November", "highlights": ["oak table", "pair of chairs"]}}'

{
  "id": "run_8c1f",
  "status": "waiting_for_review",
  "steps": [
    { "name": "Draft email", "status": "done" },
    { "name": "Review", "status": "waiting" }
  ]
}

Nothing is sent automatically

A run started from code stops at the review step, exactly like one started in the workspace. Sending always needs a person.

What to read next

If other people will work in the same project, continue with Team and Permissions. To go back to the overview, see Getting Started.