Your next employee might be AI, so write the job description first

My talk at the Vancouver AI Summit 2025 had a short title. Your next employee might be AI.

I still believe it. But most people hear that line and picture software. Something you buy, plug in and forget about. I picture a new hire. And a new hire works out or doesn’t for a very ordinary reason. Somebody either told them what the job was, or nobody did.

So before you switch anything on, write an AI agent job description. A real one, the kind you’d hand a person on their first morning.

Why does an AI agent need a job description?

Because an agent does exactly what you asked and nothing you meant. A person who hits something odd walks over to your desk. An agent picks an answer and keeps going. The job description is how you put your judgment in front of it before that happens.

When you hire someone, you don’t hand over the keys and leave. You tell them what they own. Who they report to. What they can spend. What has to come to you first. Then you watch the first couple of weeks closely.

An agent needs all of that more than a person does. It won’t ask. That’s the whole problem, and it’s why so many first agents either get switched off in a month or quietly inherit every bad habit the business already had.

The bookkeeper who can’t sign the cheque

The best picture I have for this is a good bookkeeper. They prepare every payment. They match the invoice, check the amount and line it up for approval. They don’t sign the cheque. That part stays with you.

That’s the line I want every owner to draw for every agent. AI does the work. People set the rules and decide where it stops.

I call that line the stop rule. It’s the exact point where the agent hands the work back to a person. No refunds. No price changes. No promising a date. No reply to an angry customer. Whatever it is for your business, write it down before the agent touches anything, because an agent acts in your name whether you meant it to or not.

What goes in an AI agent job description?

Five lines are enough to start. The job in one sentence, what the agent can touch, what it can never do, who checks its work and the one number you’ll judge it on in week two.

• The job. One sentence. “Answer every new web inquiry within five minutes and book the ones that fit.”
• What it can touch. Name it. The shared inbox, the booking calendar, the quote template. Nothing else.
• What it can never do. Your stop rule, in plain words.
• Who it reports to. One person who reads its work, fixes its mistakes and updates its instructions.
• How you’ll judge it. One number, checked in week two. New tools get judged by week two whether you plan for it or not.

If you can’t fill in line one, the agent isn’t ready. Go back and pick a smaller first job.

You don’t need to teach it the trade

A good foreman doesn’t need to be taught to swing a hammer. What he needs on day one is how your site runs. Same with AI. The skill is already there. Your shop isn’t.

The models already know how to write an email, summarize a report or read a quote request. What they don’t know is that your biggest client gets a phone call and never an email. Or that anything over a certain amount goes to you. Or that the spring rush changes who answers what.

That’s the part only you can write down. It’s also the part most owners skip, because it lives in their head. If that’s you, record the process before the agent ever sees it.

Here’s what that looks like for an Airdrie HVAC office in the fall rush, as an example. The phones ring more than two people can answer. The job description might say: answer every call and web inquiry, book maintenance visits into open slots, never quote a replacement price, and pass anything about a no-heat emergency straight to the on-call tech. Four lines. That’s the difference between a helpful hire and a liability with a login.

My take

Here’s my bet. The owners who get real value from AI this year will be the ones who did one unglamorous thing first and wrote the job down. The tool they pick will matter a lot less than that page.

If you want the build side, my guide to building an AI agent for one real business task walks through it. And if you’d rather have the job written and the agent built with your team, that’s my AI agent architecture and orchestration work.

Hiring an AI agent, the questions owners ask

Write five lines for your first agent this week. I share what I’m testing every Friday in the AI Newsletter with ZAK.