Start a run

On a job’s page, the agent bar starts the agent’s work. Choose how it should work, then say what you want:

Work: It plans, you approve, it delivers. If the job has no agent yet, this puts the agent on it.
Ask: It answers from what is known and changes nothing.

Runs also start:

when a job is filed or first gets an agent: the project’s agent takes a first look, which reads and changes nothing
on a job’s start day, for the job’s owner
when someone mentions an agent in a note on a job
from a routine, and from Ask

Anyone who can change work in the project can start a run, with an agent they may use. Agents start on their own only if everyone in the workspace can use them.

While it works

Plans. When a first run could send something outside, or the expected result isn’t chosen yet, it plans first, and the job’s owner approves the plan from Your turn.
Questions. An agent can pause to ask a question, with two to four suggested answers. Anyone who can work in the project can answer it from Your turn.
Approvals. Each change or message it proposes waits for a person with the right to approve it. See Approvals.
Questions and approvals left for 24 hours expire, and a run whose question expires stops. Questions from a first look wait 7 days.

Reply to the agent in the bar. Only the person who started a conversation can continue it, and while a run is working, a new message starts a separate conversation. Messages can be up to 8,000 characters, with up to 8 files of up to 25 MB each.

Stop agent ends a run where it is. Anything it already saved to the job is kept, and work in progress isn’t finished. Anyone who can work in the project can stop a run.

Each run shows what it did and what it spent, and the Runs tab of the roster lists the runs in your projects. A run stops when it reaches a job’s budget, its agent’s monthly cap, or the end of the workspace’s credits. See Spending limits.

What agents deliver

A job’s expected result says what its runs should file:

Document: A report or brief, laid out as a designed page with headings, callouts, figures, diagrams and charts.
One-page memo: A short document on a single page.
Slide deck: Slides you can present in Arbituro.
Draft pull request: Code changes on a new branch in GitHub, opened as a draft.
GitHub issue: An issue in the project’s repository.
Nothing to file: Work with no result to file, such as sending messages or updating records.

Documents, memos and decks appear under Delivered on the job, in the review, and in a viewer of their own. From there you can present a deck, print or save as PDF, and download a Word document or a PowerPoint deck.
Your workspace’s brand goes on them: the logo and legal details on the letterhead and a deck’s title slide, its typefaces, and its accent colour. Owners and admins set it in Settings, under Brand.
A draft pull request or a GitHub issue needs a person’s approval, and the run can’t finish until it is linked to the job. An agent works on a new branch, never the one it starts from, and can’t merge. See GitHub.

Pictures

Agents allowed to draw add pictures to decks, and to reports and memos unless the project turns that off. An image model draws them in one house style, in the brand’s accent colour, with no text or logos. A run draws up to four pictures for a deck, three for a document and one for a memo, and each picture spends credits. On screen, each picture says which agent drew it.

Review a result

When a run files its result, the job’s judge finds it in Your turn under Judge. Review the result opens the result beside the job’s acceptance criteria.

Mark each criterion you decide as met or not met.
Record a verdict: accept, accept with edits, reject with a reason, or take over. Only the judge can, and anyone in the project can read the review.
A rejected result goes back with your reason. Depending on the project’s settings, the job runs again straight away or waits for someone to run it again.
Once the result is accepted and every criterion is met or waived, Mark it done moves the job to a finished status.

A project can also have the agent, or another agent, check a result before a person judges it. See How agents work here.

Routines

A routine asks an agent to do something once or on a schedule. Workspace owners and admins create them, from the Routines tab of the roster, with agents everyone can use.

One time: On a date and at a time you choose.
On a schedule: Every day, on weekdays, weekly or monthly. It can then repeat every 1 to 60 minutes, for up to 24 hours.
Events: When something happens in the project, such as a job being filed, optionally only for some statuses or priorities.

By default a routine starts its agent. Turn that off and it files a job instead, for someone to pick up. Run now runs it straight away.

Ask about a project

Ask, a tab of every project, is a conversation with an agent about the project. Anything it proposes still needs a person’s approval, and it doesn’t file results or draw pictures. It reads the project’s work and documents, and it can use the connections and web search its agent has been given.

Something missing or wrong? Email support@arbituro.com.