---
name: Create your first agent
summary: Ernest's video guide to creating a first agent around a real role, with a checkpoint for putting that agent to work.
---

# Create Your First Agent

An agent is useful when it has a real role: something to pay attention to and a kind of work to help you with.

In this video, I show how to create your first agent:

[Watch: How to create your first agent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN9NPrY8y9k)

Begin with work you already do. A writing agent, sales agent, research agent, or review agent has something concrete to learn from.

Tell your local agent what you want to create:

> Create an agent that helps me with [the work you care about].

Describe a real piece of work, what useful help would look like, and anything the agent should not decide alone. You do not need to define the perfect personality. Use the agent, notice what helps, and shape it as you work together. The corrections you keep repeating become its [skills](../explore/skills.md).

## Done when

You have an agent with a role you understand and a real piece of work to try with it.