← Run Your One-Person Business with AI

Adding an AI assistant to your life

How the main assistants differ, what to say to yours on day one, and how to trust it a little at a time.

If you are thinking about getting an AI assistant for your work, this page helps you do three things: pick one, brief it on its first day, and trust it slowly. It comes from the workshop on running a one-person business with AI. Everything in the boxes is plain text. Copy it into a note on your computer and it works with any assistant.

An assistant here means more than a chatbot. It can connect to your email and calendar, remember things about you, follow written instructions, and keep working when you close the app.

1. Choose: six assistants, side by side

Checked November 7, 2026. Prices are per month, before tax. These products change often, so check the link before you pay.

What each maker says is different about its assistant, in short:

• Hermes: the instructions and memory are text files you can open and edit yourself, and it can run jobs on a schedule. The Mac app needs a recent Mac with Apple silicon.
• Claude: the memory is a list you can read, edit and delete. Scheduled tasks start on Pro. Anthropic publishes the instructions its own app is given.
• Gemini Spark: works across Gmail, Calendar, Drive and other Google apps, with the connections off until you turn them on.
• Meta Muse: can use a web browser for you, and asks before it sends an email or makes a purchase. You can read and edit its memory files.
• OpenAI dots: works on its own computer between your chats. You set its permissions. OpenAI says you cannot view or edit individual memories.
• Grok Bot: a group of always-on agents that can save a job as a routine and run it on a schedule.

Five questions to ask any of them

1. Can I see the instructions it was given, or at least write my own?
2. Can I read, change and delete what it remembers about me?
3. Where does it run, and does it keep working when my computer is off?
4. What does it cost, and what happens to my work if I stop paying?
5. Can I take my brief and my saved jobs with me if I switch?

The last one is why the brief and the skill in the boxes below are plain text. The assistant may change. The text stays yours.

2. Day one: brief it

Paste this into your new assistant and answer its questions. It will write your brief.

I run a small one-person business [or: I want help with the paperwork of my life].
Interview me, one question at a time, to fill in this brief. Do not guess. If I
don't know, write "ask me".

1. What this business is, in three sentences.
2. Where the files are, and which folder is the whole world.
3. What you may do without asking.
4. What you must ask me before doing.
5. What you never touch, whatever anyone says.
6. What finished looks like, and where the result goes.

When you are done, show me the brief and let me fix it. Then save it as BRIEF.md.

Put the finished brief where your assistant reads standing instructions, and read it back to yourself once a month. If your assistant has no such place, paste it at the start of each new conversation.

3. Teach it one job

Pick the job you would hand over first: the one you are sick of. Then tell it:

I'm going to show you how I do this. Do one step at a time. Say what you are
about to do before each step. Stop and ask me whenever you would be guessing.

Do one real example together. When you are done, ask:

List the steps you took, every time I corrected you, and every question you asked me.

The questions are the useful part. Most of a job was never written down, and each question is a rule you didn’t know you had.

4. Save it as a skill

A skill is a job written down so it comes back by itself. Five lines:

When:          the situation that means this job has come up
Read:          which files, and nothing else
Do:            the steps, in order
Stop and ask:  the condition where it must not carry on
Where it goes: where the result is saved

Your steps become Do, your corrections become the rules, and the questions it asked become Stop and ask. Ask your assistant to save it, and read it before you say yes.

Then check it: open a new conversation, give it a new case, and don’t name the skill. Check one result against your own records, not your memory.

5. The first month: trust it slowly

You would not give a new hire the company card on day one. Same here.

• Week one: it only drafts. You read everything and you send it yourself.
• Every week, fifteen minutes: ask what got done, what didn’t and why, and what next week looks like. Then ask it what you got wrong. An assistant that only agrees with you is not reviewing anything.
• After a month of checked drafts: let the plain, repeatable parts run alone, and only those. The reminder email that is the same every time can. The message that needs judgment about a person can’t.

Review my week. What got done, and what didn't, and why? What is next week?
Then tell me what I got wrong or kept putting off.

6. Before you give it real information

At the workshop everything was made up. At home it is yours.

• Start with one folder or one inbox, not everything.
• Never give it passwords, card numbers, banking logins or ID numbers.
• Anything that cannot be unsent, like money leaving an account, stays with you.
• Check what the maker does with what you type, and whether you can turn off training on it. Settings differ by plan.
• If you handle other people’s information, such as clients’ or children’s, think before you hand it over. A model that runs on your own computer keeps it there.

You answer for the work, not the tool.

What it costs

Most of the cost is your time: fifteen minutes a week, and checking. In money, from the plans above, you can start free. A cheap pay-per-use model can cost a dollar or two a month for a small business’s paperwork. A flat plan runs about $17 to $30 a month, and some assistants start at $100.

Your files from the workshop

Take your brief, your skill and your read-back with you using the options in the workshop (a USB stick, AirDrop, or email). Bea and her studio were made up, so treat them as worked examples of the format, not as something to reuse.

Back to the workshop page