In short
The instructions are the code. Write what you want in plain language, keep it in a file, update the file forever. No Python, no Bash.
The second practice, and the thesis in one line. Agents take instructions. Instructions are written in plain text and Markdown. So the programming a business owner needs to learn is not a language with syntax; it is the discipline of saying clearly what should happen, what must never happen, and how to tell when it is done, and keeping that in a file.
This is not a metaphor. The files are literally what runs. When a rule is added to an instruction file, the agent's behavior changes on the next run. When the file is moved to a new harness, the behavior comes with it.
We teach this by having people write their own instruction files while we build, for their own work, and watching an agent run them.
Example
What it looks like.
Before: 'we should really automate the weekly report.'After, a file:# Weekly reportEvery Monday 07:00. Pull last week's numbers from the sheet. Compare to the week before. Three lines, plain English, no adjectives. Send to the owner. If a number is missing, say which, do not guess.
Related
Read next.
- MarkdownPlain text with a few marks for structure. Humans read it, machines parse it. It is the language we write instructions in.Read the definition
- plain textText with no hidden formatting. What you see is all there is. The most durable format there is.Read the definition
- instruction fileThe Markdown file that tells an agent who it is, what it owns, and what it may never do. The agent's job description, readable by the agent.Read the definition
- output is informationA bad result is data about what the model understood. Read it, adjust, go again. Beginners stop at two tries. Builders go fifteen.Read the definition