03 / The Workshop
The Workshop
Ask AI to Build Your First Assistant
15 MIN TO STARTDescribe the work. Let AI help build the instructions. Test them together.
You don’t need to write every instruction yourself. You can ask AI to help design an assistant, work out the context it needs, and create its first reusable skill.
The assistant has a job; the skill gives it a repeatable process. In this example, the assistant helps manage a learning project. Its first skill turns meeting notes into decisions, actions, and open questions. Use this example or substitute a task you do every week.
1. Describe the work
Choose something you know well enough to judge. What should the assistant help with? What information can you give it? What would make its output useful? You can work through those questions with AI.
2. Ask AI to help design it
Copy this prompt into your AI tool. Answer its questions before it drafts the instructions.
Help me build an AI assistant for managing a learning project. Its first reusable skill should turn meeting notes into decisions, actions, and open questions. Ask me a few questions first about my workflow, the information I can provide, and what a useful result looks like. Then draft the assistant’s overall instructions and a separate set of instructions for its first skill. Explain what context or example files I should supply. Don’t invent owners, deadlines, or commitments. Ask which AI tool I’m using, then explain where to put each piece and how to test it.
3. Put the output to work
Ask AI to keep these pieces separate so you can review and save each one. The exact setup depends on your tool.
| What AI creates | What to do with it |
|---|---|
| Assistant instructions | Save them in your tool’s project or assistant instructions, where supported. |
| Skill instructions | Add them through the tool’s skill feature, or save them as a reusable task prompt. |
| Suggested context | Supply an approved project brief, team terminology, and an example of a good result. |
For example, the assistant’s instructions might say: “Help me keep this learning project organized. Use the project brief and flag information that needs my decision.” Its meeting-notes skill should spell out the process: separate decisions from proposals, extract actions and their owners, and mark missing dates as unknown.
Saving instructions does not automatically connect apps, grant file access, or schedule work. Ask your AI tool what setup it supports. Learn about Agent Skills.
4. Test it and improve it together
Give the assistant real notes you can check. Ask it to use the meeting-notes skill, then compare the result with the source.
Your notes: “Priya will review the onboarding outline. We discussed a Friday launch, but no date was agreed.”
A useful result: Priya owns the review; its deadline is unknown. Friday is a proposed launch date, not a commitment. The launch date still needs a decision.
If the assistant gets that wrong, say: “You treated a proposed date as confirmed. Revise the skill so it preserves that distinction.” Review the revision, save it where the skill lives, and try another example.
You now have an assistant, one repeatable skill, and a way to improve both. Start small, learn from the results, and add more skills as you find other work worth repeating.