Scope the job and set the rules
Agree on the tasks the assistant may handle, what it must leave alone, and when a person must approve its work. Start with a small trial.
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Full lesson & technical details
What a VA Bot should and should not touch, the 30-minute intake that produces the rules file, and the Auto-review setup that makes the first mistake harmless.
What the client is buying
Not “AI”. They are buying: an inbox at zero every evening, no missed request, a calendar that fills itself correctly, notes after every call, and two briefs a day that tell them what matters. Say it that way on the sales call.
The intake (30 minutes, recorded)
- “Walk me through yesterday’s inbox. What did you do with each kind of email?”
- “Who must always reach you, and what word or phrase means urgent?”
- “How do people book time with you today? What goes wrong?”
- “After a call, what should exist: notes, a follow-up email, a CRM update?”
- “What should the Bot never do without asking?”
The answers become rules.md: VIP senders, urgency keywords, categories with the action for each (reply-draft, archive, forward, flag), scheduling preferences (working hours, buffers, no-meeting blocks, preferred lengths), the follow-up template, and the never-list.
Least access
Gmail: read, label, draft; sending stays behind approval. Calendar: read and create holds; changes to existing events ask first. CRM: read and add notes; status changes ask first. The client signs in to each plugin themselves on the call. If a service needs a password login through the browser, it goes in Vault or 1Password, never in chat.
Auto-review
Set in the Bot: ask first before any send, calendar change, CRM write, file deletion or payment; allowed to read, label, draft, search, summarize and write to the log sheet. Prove it: ask the Bot to send you a test email; it must stop and ask.
Categories that earn auto-send later
After two weeks of approving every draft, the client usually moves two categories to auto-send: calendar confirmations and “received, will reply by…” acknowledgements. Everything else stays drafted. Write the date of each change in the Rules tab.
Worked example
Category: Showing requests (ShowingTime notifications, “can we see”, “tour”, “showing”) Action: reply-draft within the hour using template SHOW-1; check calendar for conflicts; propose two times; add a HOLD to the calendar; log in Tasks. Never confirm a time without approval. If the sender is a VIP broker, flag urgent and text Mara.
Instructions you can copy (prompts)
Copy the instructions, replace the words inside {braces} with your details, and paste them into your AI tool. Check and edit the answer.
From the intake transcript at {transcript path}, write rules.md for the VA Bot: VIP senders (name, email, why); urgency keywords; email categories with the action for each (reply-draft, archive, forward-to, flag, ignore) and an example subject line; scheduling preferences (working hours in {tz}, meeting lengths, buffers, no-meeting blocks, locations/links); the follow-up email template in the client’s voice; CRM rules (what gets logged, when status changes); the never-list. Mark unknowns as ASK. Then set Auto-review: ask first before any email send, calendar change, CRM write, deletion or payment; allow reading, labeling, drafting, searching, summarizing and writing to the log sheet. Show me rules.md and the rules you set, then send me a test email so I can confirm you stop and ask.
Run the intake with a friend or on the sample client Mara (capstone page), produce rules.md, set Auto-review, and run the test-email check. Paste rules.md and what the Bot said when asked to send.
Done when: A rules file with no guesses and a Bot that stops before sending.. Sign up to save your work to your account.
Quick knowledge check
3 questions, 60% passes. Checkpoints, the certification exam (three versions) and the reviewed final project are unlocked with a free account.
- The Bot may send an email:
- Client passwords go:
- The intake’s most important answer is: