Good habits

The agent does its best work when a request says what done looks like. These habits carry over directly from Claude Tag.

Name the outcome

Say what you want back, not just the topic.

Instead of Try
@cloud thoughts on the pricing thread? @cloud read the pricing thread and give me the three options we discussed, who backed each, and what's still undecided.
@cloud help with the vendor list @cloud from the vendor contracts in the group files, make a spreadsheet of vendor, renewal date and annual cost, sorted by renewal date.

Give it a definition of done

For anything longer than a lookup, say when it's finished: "a draft I can send", "a table with one row per customer", "a yes or no with the reason". It stops when it gets there instead of guessing.

Point it at its sources

It searches the whole group archive and its files, but a pointer saves time and avoids the wrong thread:

  • "the thread called Q3 offsite from last week"
  • "the contract PDF Sam attached on Tuesday"
  • "the Linear project Onboarding v2", when the group has that connector

Keep one task per thread

Each thread is its own session. Start a new thread for a new task, so each one stays short and readable for everyone else in the group. To carry a settled discussion into new work, use !fork:

@cloud !fork turn what we agreed here into the announcement email

Steer by replying

You don't have to get the first message right. Reply in the thread to correct it ("use last quarter's numbers instead"), and it picks up the follow-up without a new mention.

Ask before it acts

Connected tools act with accounts an admin set up for the whole group, so the agent confirms before consequential changes. Make that explicit when it matters: "draft the tickets and show me before you file them."

Save what should last

If something should hold for every future thread, ask it to remember it, or ask an admin to put it in the group's instructions. See What it remembers.

Prompts to start from

@cloud catch me up on this group's last week: decisions, open questions, and anything waiting on me.

@cloud what can you access from this group?

@cloud turn this thread into a one-page decision doc as a Word file: context, options, decision, owners.

@cloud find every thread in the last month that asked a question nobody answered, with a link line for each.

@cloud remember: our fiscal year starts in February.