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AI Chief of Staff Prompt Builder
Answer eight short questions. Get a first assignment you can paste into Grok Bot or any AI assistant you use.
YOUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT
You're my Chief of Staff. Here's your first assignment. MY BUSINESS A Shopify skincare brand selling to repeat customers in the US THIS WEEK'S PRIORITY Win back customers who haven't reordered in 60 days YOUR RECURRING JOB Every weekday morning, review yesterday's orders and support tickets and tell me what needs my attention WHAT YOU CAN USE The daily orders export and the support inbox summary I drop in our shared folder If you need anything that isn't listed here, ask me first. WHAT A USEFUL RESULT LOOKS LIKE A short brief: the top three issues, why each one matters, and one suggested next step for each ASK ME BEFORE YOU Emailing customers, issuing refunds or discounts, or changing anything in Shopify Don't send messages, spend money or change any account without my OK. WHERE TO PUT THE RESULT A message to me before 9 AM WHEN TO CHECK BACK Every weekday at 8:30 AM, and sooner if something looks urgent HOW TO WORK - Keep facts separate from assumptions. - List open questions instead of guessing. - Suggest one next step for each item. Before you start, tell me in two or three sentences how you'll handle this job, and ask me anything that's unclear.
NEXT STEP
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It starts with meeting your Chief of Staff and ends with giving it the next job.
How to use your assignment
- Paste it in as a new message. Grok Bot or whatever assistant you use. Keep the whole thing, including the last line.
- Answer its questions first. The last line asks it to explain its plan and flag anything unclear. That’s where the gaps show up, before they turn into a bad result.
- Run it once and read what comes back. Judge it on one question: is checking this faster than doing the job myself?
- Correct it in plain words. “Shorter.” “Skip anything older than a week.” Then fold those fixes back into the assignment.
- Put it on a routine only after it earns one. A job that needs heavy editing every time isn’t ready to repeat.
Why these eight parts
A long prompt can still leave an assistant guessing what good work looks like. Each of these eight answers takes away one guess.
- Who your business serves
- Without it, you get advice written for every business, which fits none of them.
- This week’s priority
- When there’s more to report than you have time to read, the priority decides what goes first.
- The recurring job
- One job, described the way you’d brief a new hire. “Marketing assistant” is a title, not a job.
- What it can use
- Name the notes, files and tools. Anything not on the list stays off limits until you add it.
- What a useful result looks like
- Say how long it should be, in what format and in what order. Leave that out and the assistant picks for you.
- What it must ask you about first
- Sending messages, spending money and changing accounts stay yours until you hand them over on purpose.
- Where the result goes
- Put it where you already look, or it piles up unread.
- When to check back
- A time or a trigger, so the work shows up without you chasing it.
A worked example
The builder opens with a skincare store. Here’s what each answer is doing.
“Win back customers who haven’t reordered in 60 days” tells the assistant what to look for first. The job is small on purpose: read yesterday’s orders and support tickets, then flag what needs attention. It works only from the exports dropped into a shared folder, so it isn’t poking around the store admin. And it has to ask before emailing customers, issuing refunds or changing anything in Shopify. Worst case, you get a weak brief. You don’t get a surprise refund.
The part people skip is the check-in. “Every weekday at 8:30 AM” means the brief lands before the day gets loud. “Sooner if something looks urgent” gives the assistant permission to interrupt you, but only for that.
Switch to the agency or SaaS example and the shape stays the same. Only the answers change.
Four ways to make an assistant useless
- Five jobs on day one. Start with one job whose output you can check.
- No example of a good result. Then it guesses, and you spend your time correcting the guesses.
- No approval rules. Decide what needs your OK before something goes out, not after.
- Never reviewing the work. If checking takes longer than doing the job yourself, rewrite the assignment.
Where this comes from
This is the first-assignment worksheet from the Grok Bots for DTC crash course, a free five-day email course that starts with meeting your Chief of Staff. I turned it into a builder so you can fill it in here instead of staring at a blank doc. The course keeps going from there: making it your teammate, connecting your workflow, putting it on a routine and handing it the next job.
What you type stays in your browser. I count how often people copy or download an assignment, never what it says.
To cite this tool: AI Chief of Staff Prompt Builder, Grok Bots for DTC.
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