Design the operation, not the task
Departments in folders, one owner per outcome, and a written flow between them.
✦ Course · Advanced
Agent operations at scale
Run many agents as an always-on operation: routines and listeners, departments in folders, acceptance checks, duplication for new markets, and supervision from the phone.
Start courseYOUR OUTCOME
You will design and run a standing operation of agents with clear ownership, evidence-based grading and a supervision routine that fits in ten minutes a day.
Turn recurring work into routines and events into listeners Write acceptance checks before the work starts Supervise by exception from the Needs you bucket
6 min
Routines for the recurring, listeners for the events
Anything that happens on a timetable is a routine; anything that happens when something changes is a listener.
Acceptance checks before the work
Ask every agent to write its checks first, then grade against them at the end.
Duplicate for a new market, client or product
Duplicate agent keeps the method and changes the job.
Supervise by exception
Needs you is your inbox; everything else is a status board.
From the phone
The Agents tab of the drawer is the same board; answer questions and steer from anywhere.
What each lesson covers
The course, lesson by lesson.
Design the operation, not the task
Departments in folders, one owner per outcome, and a written flow between them.
At scale the unit is a department: a folder of agents with one accountable outcome and a flow to the next department. Name the outcome each department owns and which document is its handoff. A folder per department keeps the Agents list readable when thirty rows are moving.
Practice. Draw your operation as folders: three or four departments, the outcome each owns, and the document that passes between them. Create the folders before you hire.
Folders: Research, Finance, Build, Marketing. Handoffs: Research → Opportunity brief.docx; Finance → Model.xlsx and Plan.docx; Build → Preview URL; Marketing → Launch calendar.docx.
Routines for the recurring, listeners for the events
Anything that happens on a timetable is a routine; anything that happens when something changes is a listener.
Recurring work goes on a schedule with Every hour, day, week or month and a preview of the next three runs. Work that starts when something happens goes to a listener: When a connected service changes, with a service, an account and an event such as Bot is mentioned, or When a webhook arrives, which gives the agent an address to post to. Quiet when nothing new stops a routine reporting silence.
Practice. Convert one recurring job to a routine and one reactive job to a listener. Use Run now on the routine to get its first report today and check the listener row under Routines and listeners.
Listener. Name: New tender alerts. Instructions: When a webhook arrives with a tender notice, read the attached brief, score fit against our capability statement in the workspace, and post a one-paragraph go/no-go with the deadline. When to work: When a webhook arrives.
Acceptance checks before the work
Ask every agent to write its checks first, then grade against them at the end.
An agent that writes its acceptance checks before starting can grade itself honestly at the end, and the grade carries evidence labels rather than opinions. Put the instruction in the goal: "Write the acceptance checks first, then do the work, then grade yourself against them." The wrap of any operation is the room grading itself and listing the gaps.
Practice. Add the checks line to one agent's goal. When it finishes, ask for the grade and read the evidence for one failed check.
Add to every goal: Before you start, write the acceptance checks for this deliverable. When you finish, grade the deliverable against them with evidence, and list what is missing.
Duplicate for a new market, client or product
Duplicate agent keeps the method and changes the job.
A proven agent is a template of your own. Duplicate agent from the title menu makes a second agent with the same instructions; rename it and change the goal on its setup card for the new market, client or product line. Keep the copies in the same folder so the family stays visible.
Practice. Duplicate your best agent for a second market. Change only the market facts in its goal and compare the two outputs side by side.
Duplicate Mia · Head of Research → Mia · NZ research. Goal: the same brief for New Zealand: online footwear size and growth, top five competitors and price points, supplier lead times to New Zealand, landed cost per pair, three risks. Cited, two pages, Word.
Supervise by exception
Needs you is your inbox; everything else is a status board.
With many agents, you do not read sessions; you answer questions. Needs you is the queue: open a row, answer in one line, and it goes back to Running. A status round in the group, "@everyone one line each", replaces reading transcripts. Stop is on every live row. The collapsed rail shows three agents and three routines, enough to see that the operation is moving.
Practice. Run your operation for a day without opening a Running session. Clear Needs you twice, do one status round, and note what you could not see from the board.
@everyone Where are we? One line each: what you delivered, and the one thing you'd flag.
From the phone
The Agents tab of the drawer is the same board; answer questions and steer from anywhere.
The phone shows the same buckets in the Agents tab of the history drawer, with New agent, New routine and New folder as rows. An agent's chat carries New routine and Members as icon buttons in the header. Answering a Needs you question from the phone continues the same session; Move to folder does what drag does on desktop.
Practice. Open the Agents tab on your phone, answer one Needs you question, and move one agent into a folder with Move to folder.
On the phone, open Priya · NZ model under Needs you and reply: Use the same ad budget as Australia, scaled to population.
Keep going
Make the learning stick
Start with one real piece of work.
Open Oppermind beside the lesson, apply each step, and leave with something you can use.