Understand what cognitive agents are and how to design them.
Cognitive agents are repeatable processes you design to handle recurring decisions.
Your habits and automatic reactions are agents that were installed without your conscious input.
Every deliberate agent you create replaces an unconscious default.
Every agent has a trigger that activates it, a condition that validates it, and an action it takes.
When an agent handles a recurring decision you preserve energy for novel decisions.
Vague agents do not fire reliably — specificity is required.
Internal agents run in your mind while external agents are embedded in tools and systems.
Inventory your existing agents both designed and default to understand what is running.
A simple agent that fires consistently beats a complex agent that fires intermittently.
Each agent should handle one specific situation — multi-purpose agents are fragile.
Written agent descriptions can be reviewed refined and shared.
Run through scenarios mentally or in low-stakes situations before relying on a new agent.
When an agent fails to fire or produces bad results you learn how to improve it.
Every agent embeds assumptions about the world — the schema it uses must be accurate.
Agents for how to respond in social situations like receiving criticism or giving feedback.
Agents for recurring decision types like buy-versus-build or accept-versus-decline.
Agents for how to structure emails presentations and difficult conversations.
Agents for sleep exercise nutrition and stress management decisions.
Agents for spending saving and investment decisions.
Designing agents for your own cognition is applying systems design to the most important system you manage.