Ben's session #2
What is a personal agent?
Hello again :)
It’s my wedding anniversary, so while you chew on this post, I’ll be chewing through a delicious lunch in the sun.
Last week I walked through a real agent session and explained the loop as we went. Agent thinks, uses a tool, thinks again. Context fills up. Compaction wipes the session. If it’s important, put it in a file.
Today’s post is why the file bit is useful when thinking about what a ‘personal agent’ is.
You may have heard about OpenClaw, Hermes, Grok Bot (launched this week), and wondered why they had/have? such hype. Why did/do? people love them? Why are they different to using ChatGPT work/Codex or Claude Cowork/Code (god someone do something about these names!)?
Do I need a personal agent too?
They’re not different products, per se, they’re just packaged like one. It’s really just about the setup. You can set up the same thing, it’s just a file and folder system.
So what’s in a personal agent?
It’s what most agents have:
instructions
tools
context
There’s nothing really special or unique to being a personal bot.
What it looks like
There’s two paths for a personal agent.
One main agent, like ‘Jarvis’:
Or split them into several agents with their own files, personality, job descriptions - just by editing the instruction file.
People often split agents to be task specific. e.g. You are my money manager agent, You are my marketing agent, You are my copywriting agent.
You can give them job descriptions, names and personalities by customising their instruction file.
I use one agent generally as I like the ‘Jarvis’ approach. I’m a poor delegator. If I need task-specific work done the main agent just reads a task specific file e.g. newsletter-research.md.
But I see the value in splitting them as ‘separate agents’, each with their own thread. This is how Grok Bot works - each agent has its own thread, but you could just set up pinned threads in Codex/Claude pointed at each specific agent folder you create.
It’s all about folders and instructions.
An agent pointed at a folder reads its instructions and that’s all the context it has.
File and folder organisation is helpful to stay on top of, I’ve not been great at that so here’s what my actual ‘chief of staff’ folder actually looks like:
Memory
It isn’t really memory, it’s a text file with a log of things that happened.
The agent reads it to get up to speed to ‘remember’ what were the recent things you worked on, who you are, etc.
Personal agents like Grok Bot give you several agents which all have their own agent-specific memory, i.e. money agent remembers all the money stuff.
But they can ‘share’ memory too - which is just agents reading other memory files.
If the personal-agent instructions says to save important information to the shared memory, each nested agent can decide when information in a session is important enough to save there.
Tools
Codex/Claude Code have a computer use tool where it can actually navigate your computer like you (but better?).
Grok Bot uses a shared computer. All the agent chats run on one machine: same files, same installs, same logins. Each chat gets its own screen.
Computer use lets it do the thing a person could do. Navigate websites, install apps, fill in forms, create files, etc.
Routines and automations
You can give all of these agents automated tasks to do, workflows, scheduled, recurring, whatever. You just ask them for it.
They all have the capability to do so given they have tools and can use a computer.
Some automations start a fresh session with the same instructions. Others wake an existing thread and continue its existing work.
You can just ask your agents to set up automations for you or Grok Bot has a ‘teach’ feature where you walk through a task on your computer recording yourself and it’ll learn how to do it. You could just record yourself and give to any agent to analyse and turn into a workflow. So it’s not a new capability, but it feels easier to try.
Wrap up
So you can see they all have very similar capabilities. They read files, take on a personality and job if it’s in its instructions, write down memories and get to work.
They can send messages to other threads or agents to get info or delegate work.
It’s all really a setup of folders and files.
I prefer having more control over the setup - namely, what goes into each file, but also changing the model or reasoning for certain tasks (which Grok Bot doesn’t have) and thinking - I like to see what my agents are doing.
And agents can be used for all sorts of things, again its just the setup. Does it have the instructions and tools available? If it does, they can do pretty much anything you’d want them to do:
Find/book flights
Order food
Negotiate contractor quotes
Organise files/folders
Collect invoices from emails and file away
Create decks
Create a morning brief
Build websites and apps
The set up is basically:
Create a folder for the agent.
Add an instruction file that defines its job and rules.
Add a user file and a memory file.
Open that folder in Codex or Claude.
Pin the thread.
Give it tools and permissions.
Add a schedule when the task is repeatable.
Behind the scenes
This is how this post came together 😂
