Give your organization a first job
What happens when I hand my organization a job, and who decides when it's done?
Give your organization a small job, read what comes back, compare it with a review, and decide what happens next. A draft can look finished and still need work.
You'll use a supplied fictional workshop so you can concentrate on how the organization works.
The organization helps produce and check the work. Your judgment remains yours.
You've practiced a pattern you can use again: give a clear request, inspect the result, get another assessment, and decide.
Polished isn't the same as right.
The job crosses parts of your organization and returns to you for a decision.
The Quality Reviewer finds. You decide.
Before you start
Complete Essentials and the Week 1 orientation. Use your existing workbench in Claude Code or Codex.
This lesson uses an already prepared workbench. If a required agent or file is missing, stop and bring the exact blocker to support. Finding the job in a new conversation is a separate return check, unqualified until observed.
The Professor helps you work through one step at a time. Ask for a hint, another example, or a smaller step whenever you need one. On return, it should check your saved work before asking you to start again.
Use the app-specific steps in the orientation’s “Call in The Professor” section, then paste this lesson’s launch in the same prepared workbench.
Start Lesson 1
Use the native aibl-the-professor agent to guide Lesson 1. Read course/workforce/module1-plan.md, course/workforce/lessons/anw-l01.md and course/workforce/first-invitation.md. Help me give the supplied fictional workshop job to Chief of Staff. Chief of Staff must present the plan and wait for my go, then show Communications Writer’s draft before Quality Reviewer. Saving my inspection is optional; wait for my separate instruction to review. Use a fresh reviewer with public inputs only. Relay exact agent returns. Nothing is sent.
Paste this short request once:
Use the native aibl-the-professor agent to start or resume Lesson 1. Read course/workforce/prompts/anw-l01.txt and course/workforce/lessons/anw-l01.md completely. Check my approved saved work, ask one question, and wait. Report missing files or native routes; do not install anything.
The job, before you run it
You've probably received writing that looked finished: clear sentences, confident tone, everything in the right place. Then you noticed the date was wrong or a link was missing. Polished isn't the same as right.
You'll use a supplied fictional workshop so you can concentrate on how the organization works. The job is to invite independent community organizers to Small Team, Clear Message. The invitation should be warm, specific, and brief.
Find the supplied job
The files are inside your workbench. Ask The Professor to open them; you do not need to copy or invent source material.
| File | What it supplies |
|---|---|
course/workforce/first-job/request.md | The fictional invitation request and completion criteria. |
course/workforce/first-job/source-a.md | The first approved source note. |
course/workforce/first-job/source-b.md | The second approved source note. |
Use this fictional exercise only. The two source notes disagree about the date, and neither includes a registration link. The Writer must leave those gaps visible rather than invent an answer. For example:
Bring one idea you want to explain clearly. Join Small Team, Clear Message, a workshop for independent community organizers, on [DATE TO CONFIRM]. Register: [REGISTRATION LINK NEEDED].
This is an illustration, not your organization's result. The request sets the job, the notes supply the facts, and the writing method helps turn them into a useful invitation.
Which agents are on this job?
(you call it in) is your course companion. It explains, asks questions, and helps you learn. It hands requests to do the organization's work to Chief of Staff.
(you call it in) coordinates the job from the Executive Office. It prepares the work order, chooses the agents, and brings decisions back to you. It does not write the invitation.
(your Chief of Staff calls it) writes the invitation from the request and approved notes.
(your Chief of Staff calls it) checks the draft against the request and sources. It belongs to Quality and reviews rather than rewriting the work.
The job crosses parts of your organization and returns to you for a decision. This exercise uses one small route; other jobs may need different agents or more exchanges.
Follow the job before you run it
Here is what is about to happen, so nothing surprises you. You hand your organization one small job: a workshop invitation. The job doesn't stay in one place. It moves across your organization, and then it comes back to you.
- 1The request. You give one small job to your Chief of Staff: a workshop invitation, with the notes it may use.
- 2A work order. The Chief of Staff writes it: which agent the job needs, which notes it may use, and why. You read it and say go before drafting starts. It doesn't write the draft. It calls the Communications Writer, in Customer Support, itself and hands over the work order.
- 3A draft, to you first. The Writer writes from the notes it was given. Because you asked, the draft comes to you before anyone reviews it.
- 4Your go-ahead. You read it on your own, then tell your Chief of Staff to go on. The same draft crosses to Quality, where the Quality Reviewer checks it against the same request.
- 5The findings. They come back to you. The reviewer finds. It doesn't decide.
- 6Your decision. Read both. Add what you see. Keep the draft, or send it back for one correction.
Two gaps travel the whole way. The notes disagree about the date, and nobody supplied a registration link. A good draft leaves both showing: [DATE TO CONFIRM] [REGISTRATION LINK NEEDED]. The Writer can't fill them. A correction can't fill them. Only you can, or a source you approve.
Work is steps. Every agent has one job.
Text alternative: a map of the organization with the first job traced across it. You, the Director, are at the top left. Beside you is the Executive Office, with the Chief of Staff highlighted. Below are six departments in a row: Customer Support, with the Communications Writer highlighted; Growth, Marketing, Operations and Sales, greyed out and marked "not on this job"; and Quality, with the Quality Reviewer highlighted. Numbered arrows trace the job: from you to the Chief of Staff; from the Chief of Staff down to the Communications Writer; the draft back up to you; on your go-ahead, the same draft across to the Quality Reviewer; the findings back to you. The last step is yours: the decision. Two gaps travel the whole way: the date the notes disagree on, and the missing registration link.
- 1The request. You give one small job to the Executive Office: a workshop invitation, with the notes it may use.
- 2A work order. The Chief of Staff writes it: which agent the job needs, which notes it may use, and why. It doesn't write the draft, and it doesn't call anyone. Your guide carries the work order to the Communications Writer, in Customer Support.
- 3A draft. The Writer writes from the notes it was given, and can't invent a fact. The draft crosses to Quality, where the Quality Reviewer checks it against the same request.
- 4The draft and the findings, together. They come back to you. The reviewer finds. It doesn't decide.
- 5Your decision. Read both. Add what you see. Keep the draft, or send it back for one correction.
[DATE TO CONFIRM] [REGISTRATION LINK NEEDED]. The Writer can't fill them. A correction can't fill them. Only you can, or a source you approve.Try it
Hand over the job
Give Chief of Staff the supplied fictional workshop request and ask it to pause after Communications Writer's draft, before Quality Reviewer reviews it. The Professor can help explain the task; Chief of Staff prepares the work order, a short written agreement about the job.
Read it for seven things: the goal, how completion will be checked, the boundaries, the context and sources, what must come back, the decision you will make, and where the work will be recorded. You don't need to memorize that list. Ask: Does this describe the job I want done?
Chief of Staff names the Communications Writer and explains why it fits. If the route surprises you, ask for its reason. It presents the plan, what done looks like, what is missing, and any background session it needs, then waits for your go. Check that your inspection pause is in the plan before approving the run. Ask for the pause now. Your Chief of Staff won't stop to show you the draft unless you ask. The words below ask for it.
Say this to Chief of Staff through the app's native agent call:
Use course/workforce/first-job/request.md, source-a.md and source-b.md for the supplied fictional invitation. Show the work order and wait for my go before writing. Show Communications Writer's draft to me before Quality Reviewer. Keep the date and link gaps visible. Nothing is sent.
Read the work order when it comes back, then say go. A request to plan is not approval to draft.
Early in the course, the charter and your approved-source list may not exist yet. Chief of Staff should say so, use the charter template provisionally, and name the supplied sources for this fictional job. That is not charter adoption or permission to search your personal files. Your business interview comes in Module 2, after the before photo.
Your read, first
Open Communications Writer's draft before asking for review. What still needs attention? Compare it with the request and notes. Does it do the job? Does it claim anything the sources don't support?
Show me Communications Writer's draft with the request and two source notes. Do not start review yet. Ask what I notice, then show my exact words and the proposed private location. Wait for my explicit consent before retaining them. Keep my observations out of shared job records and reviewer inputs. If I decline, continue without inventing saved observations. If the private save route is unavailable, report that limitation and keep retention pending.
Forming your own view first helps you notice whether the later review changes your mind. You can keep your thoughts to yourself. If you do save them, Week 4 uses them. That is when you compare your own judgment with your organization's, and you can only compare what you kept. Preserve your observations: ask to see your exact words and where they would be kept privately, then decide whether to approve saving. Read the saved words back after approval. You may decline and continue; the Week 4 comparison will then lack these observations and must say so. Saving and starting review are separate decisions. If private storage is unavailable, leave retention pending rather than put your observations in shared course or job records.
Then the review
Tell Chief of Staff to continue to review. Saving notes and continuing are separate decisions. Chief of Staff requests a fresh review of the public work order, approved sources, and draft, without your private reflection or this conversation.
When you're ready, say this to your Chief of Staff:
Continue to a fresh Quality Reviewer review of this same draft using only the approved public work order, sources and bound public ready receipt. Do not include my private response or this conversation. Show the findings, then the result. Nothing is sent.
Read Quality Reviewer's findings before its overall result. Findings explain what it noticed and point to the draft. Its result may say ready to send (READY_TO_SEND), borderline (BORDERLINE), or needs revision (NEEDS_REVISION). Even “ready to send” is a review result, not permission to send.
Quality Reviewer may also report confidence in its judgment. That describes its uncertainty, not the quality of the draft. Read the reasons and quoted evidence instead of treating a number as your decision.
What did you both notice? What did Quality Reviewer catch that you missed? What did you notice that it didn't? Where do you disagree?
Decide
Keep the working draft or request one correction, and explain why. Keeping a draft does not settle unresolved details. The date and registration link need confirmation from you or a source you approve.
For a correction, Chief of Staff routes the work back to the Writer. Quality Reviewer reviews the new draft; the original draft and review remain available for comparison. If that attempt still needs revision, stop and decide the next step yourself rather than letting corrections continue indefinitely.
Say one of these to your Chief of Staff, replacing the blanks with your decision:
Keep this working draft. My reason: ___. Nothing is sent.
Make one correction: ___. My reason: ___. Use a new job, preserve the original, get a fresh review of the corrected draft, then stop for my decision. Nothing is sent.
After the one correction, make your final keep-or-stop decision. Do not approve keeping a corrected artifact that was never produced.
Nothing is sent in this exercise. The Professor asks separately before saving each additional course record. These shared job and course records are files in your workbench, not a request to publish online. They must not contain your private reflection.
Find it again, cold
Ask The Professor to open the work order, draft, review, and decision where recorded. Ask for them by name; you don't need to manage filenames. These work records, sometimes called receipts, show what happened. Job records live under runs/; The Professor saves your approved learning and continuation records separately.
Have The Professor help me return to my saved first job. Use the job or continuation note I identify, not the newest folder. Show its actual work order, draft, review and decision where present, then ask whether I want the next unfinished step. Do not replay completed work or read private inspection responses.
Read Communications Writer's returned draft and Quality Reviewer's returned findings, not just a summary of them. The app may relay those returns into your conversation. Keep the exact agent text visibly separate from an explanation of it.
Separate return check, unqualified until observed: if you approved saving a course continuation note, open a fresh conversation in the same workbench. Give The Professor that note's exact path or this job's actual identifier, and ask it to check course/workforce/module1-plan.md and course/workforce/reference/continuation-record.md. It must find the same job and next unfinished step, show what it found, and obtain fresh permission before continuing. Do not let it guess the newest job or treat earlier approval as permission to act again. The supplied return procedure is a candidate until this works in your client. This repeats the return habit from Essentials: close the conversation, reopen, and find where you left off.
Unsaved private thoughts won't be available. If a record is missing, leave that part unfinished. If the supplied dashboard supports this job, ask to open the same work there too; the files remain the evidence of what happened.
What just happened: the agent loop
An agent can work through a job in steps, using information, taking actions, and checking results:
Look → Think → Act → Check. Go again when needed.
- Look: Read the request, notes, or current result.
- Think: Choose a next step using the available information.
- Act: Do something, such as read a file, return a draft, or request a review.
- Check: Inspect what happened and whether another step is needed.
A run can finish or stop because it needs information, permission, or help. A loop does not mean the agent runs unattended forever. A schedule that starts work later is a separate thing.
The picture below will connect those steps with observable examples. Follow the loop, then look for corresponding actions in your own run.
Look, think, act, check.The agent loop as four steps, with the moments from your own first job that match each one.
Reasoning is choosing a next step from the information available. You can ask for a short explanation of a choice; that explanation is not a transcript of every internal thought.
Dispatch is assigning work to another agent. Chief of Staff coordinates the calls for this job. The Professor helps you understand them. The mechanics differ between apps, but you should still be able to identify the work assigned and result returned.
Tyler's personal Claude Code setup uses a bridge for jobs involving multiple agents or follow-up work. It carries the job through a background session and brings the result back to Chief of Staff. His Codex route coordinates through its native agent calls. This supplied lesson uses sequential native calls through Chief of Staff in both apps; no bridge installation is required. Chief of Staff checks the supported route and reports a setup problem if it cannot proceed. In this lesson, specialists return their work to Chief of Staff; the wider exchanges shown in Tyler's personal demo aren't instructions to bypass that route.
Look back at your own run
Ask The Professor to help you find examples of looking, acting, and checking, plus any returned explanation of a choice. Did the Communications Writer use the supplied notes? Which draft came back? What did Quality Reviewer check? A progress message alone does not prove an action happened. A missing step stays missing.
Then follow one ordinary rule through the job: the draft comes back to you instead of being sent. Find the written instruction, the point where the job waited for your choice, and your decision where recorded. A written rule, observed behavior, and a tested technical restriction are different kinds of evidence. Don't claim the last one just because the rule exists.
When something doesn't look right
| What you notice | What to do |
|---|---|
| Chief of Staff chooses an unexpected agent. | Ask why it fits and which role instructions informed the choice. |
| Communications Writer supplies a definite date or link. | Ask for the source. One proposed date doesn't settle the conflict; a missing link must not be invented. |
| Quality Reviewer recommends a change you disagree with. | Compare the finding with the request and notes. Explain your decision. |
| Quality Reviewer finds nothing, but you notice a problem. | Raise it. A reviewer can miss something; your inspection still matters. |
| The job skips your inspection or requires saving private notes to continue. | Stop and report the mismatch. The lesson must stop for your inspection before you can finish this step. |
| A draft or review never comes back. | Ask The Professor to identify the missing step and recovery action. An example cannot replace a missing result. |
| A fresh conversation can't find the job. | Check what was saved. Preserve completed work; don't silently restart the whole exercise. |
If you're stuck, start with one draft sentence, its source, and the reviewer's finding. Ask The Professor for a hint or a different example, then make your own judgment. If setup remains blocked, it can help you prepare the exact step, message, and question to bring to your cohort or a support session.
Saved for you
Saved for you. This run is saved in your workbench: the request, the work order, the draft, the review, and your decision. Your own read of the draft is there too, if you chose to save it. Ask for any of them and The Professor will open it. Job records live under runs/. If you requested a correction, both versions remain available. Private thoughts do not belong in the shared job records or Quality Reviewer's input.
Words you now own
- Work order the written agreement about the job.
- Draft the Communications Writer's proposed result.
- Findings the Quality Reviewer's observations and evidence.
- The loop look, think, act, check, then finish or stop.
- Reasoning choosing a next step from available information.
- Dispatch assigning work to another agent.
Three checks on your screen
A missing result leaves its check unfinished. Finding this job in a fresh conversation remains a separate, pending acceptance check until the return above has been observed.
Keep adding to the before photo you opened during orientation. The Professor keeps its record or index at work/course/staff/before-picture.md; you can ask for it by name. Preserve the original questions and answers; don't rewrite them after adding context. Lesson 3 adds the original answers to three questions asked before personal context. Those answers are the comparison point for later lessons; do not invent them here.
You've practiced a pattern you can use again: give a clear request, inspect the result, get another assessment, and decide. The organization helps produce and check the work. Your judgment remains yours.
A reviewed draft is still not a finished draft. The Quality Reviewer finds. You decide.
Next: See what shaped the result. In Lesson 2, you'll use this same job to examine the Communications Writer's instructions, its method, and the notes it received.