What Should I Do on Paper Before I Build an AI Agent?
Goals first, then an org chart, then who delegates what. The paper step I do before I open the builder.
Start with your goals, written in your own words or spoken with a dictate feature. Then sketch an org chart: how many AI agents you might need, where they would sit, and how you'll delegate to them. The workflows come after that, and the build comes last.
Before I open a builder, I do the thinking first, on paper or by voice. I say this in my series introduction video.
Why do goals come first?
From my setup video. When I'm thinking about setting up AI agents, I think about my goals.
In the live session I gave three rules that I like to follow as a best practice for setting up an AI agent (9:13). Goals are the second. The first is a persona.
From the recording, 9:20. Number one, give the agent a persona.
From the recording, 9:51. The next thing that we want to do is we want to tell the agent what its goals are.
Persona, goals and deliverables, I said, apply to any AI agent (9:57).
How do I write my goals down?
- 01
Sit down for a clarity session. In my words, you understand what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it.
- 02
If you work alone, get out note cards or a notebook and write out your ideas before you start building.
- 03
Write your goals out, or speak them with a dictate feature, and crystallize them yourself.
- 04
Use AI after that to help you consider different angles.
Those steps are my own order, from the video.
From my setup video. In my experience, when I'm setting up my goals, I actually write my goals out or I use a dictate feature to speak my goals, and I crystallize those myself. I may use AI to help me consider different angles, etc. But, that's the foundation step before you build a team of agents.
How I speak goals into the microphone is in How Do You Dictate Goals to an AI Agent?.
How do I sketch the org chart?
When I started learning about AI agents, my brain went to an org chart, because I've been a manager and I have hired people.
From my setup video. So, when I started learning about AI agents, automatically thought of org chart. That's how my brain started processing how I may utilize AI agents.
The chart answers three questions, in the order I ask them.
From my setup video. I begin to think about how am I going to achieve my goals and how many agents might I need? It's starting first with the goals, laying out the chart, and how am I going to delegate? From that, I can build out the workflows for the agents.
Copy this onto paper and fill in the blanks.
``` My goals (one line each, and why): 1. 2. 3.
My AI agents (how many might I need?): Seat 1: Where it sits on the chart: What I delegate to it: Seat 2: Where it sits on the chart: What I delegate to it:
Workflows (built from the chart): ```
My video doesn't show my own org chart. It points to the next part of the series for that.
What do I build first?
When I taught the live build, I started everyone on a chief of staff AI agent.
From the recording, 4:45. But in general, we're going to start off with a chief of staff agent today. That's something most people can relate to.
If you already know what you want your first AI agent to do, What Should Your First AI Agent Be? goes through that choice. For where the first one sits among the steps that follow, see the AI staircase.
What goes wrong
Starting without goals is the first of the three.
From my setup video. If you do not have goals, setting up an agent or a team of agents, it's really confusing, and you waste a lot of tokens and time.
Second, asking a chatbot for a strategy in place of writing your own.
From my setup video. I know a lot of folks are tempted to just tell ChatGPT or Claude, "Hey, give me a strategy that I can go with." But as you may learn, using AI tools and AI agents, it's really important to take a step back and to consider what it's giving you.
Third, building the AI agents and walking away.
From my setup video. You can't just set it and forget it when it comes to AI agents. You need to be able to get under the hood, read the instructions, understand the connectors, as well as the skills that you're giving your agents to set it up for success.
Where this comes from
This article grows from the session I taught live with Women Applying AI on October 7, 2026, and from my published setup video on YouTube, whose captions were pulled on October 31, 2026. The quoted passages are my own words, taken verbatim from the recording and the video. The steps, tables and checklists around them were drafted by my team's AI agents from those words and my published pages, and checked against the recording before publishing.
Build Your First AI Agent in One Hour: the full session with the clips, the prompts and the transcript.
Related reading: What Should Your First AI Agent Be?, The AI Staircase: Six Steps From Chatting to an AI Agent Team, and The 6-Box AI Agent Onboarding Canvas.
Frequently asked questions
What comes before the build?
Your goals, written or spoken in your own words. After that comes the org chart, then the workflows.
What goes on the org chart?
How many AI agents you might need, where they would sit, and how you delegate to each one.
Can I ask a chatbot for my goals?
I write my goals out or speak them myself. I may use AI to help me consider different angles after that.
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