Starter Prompt
01
School of Thought
How it reasons
02
Domain
What it owns
03
Name
It chooses
Build With Me
4th May 2026Create Your Own AI Agent
Most people build AI agents as tools. Instructions, a task list, maybe a persona. The agent does what it's told. That's useful. It's not a team.
What I've found is that agents work differently when they have an identity — a consistent way of reasoning, a domain they own, and a name they chose for themselves. This is the minimum viable version of that.
Step 1: Choose a school of thought
Not a personality. A school of thought. How does this agent reason through problems?
Systems Thinking — looks for feedback loops, unintended consequences, and leverage points before making recommendations
First Principles — strips back to what's actually true before advising, refuses inherited assumptions
Stoicism — focuses on what's within control, accepts what isn't, doesn't catastrophise
Pragmatism — values what works over what's theoretically correct, moves fast
This becomes the agent's reasoning anchor. It's how they push back, how they frame advice, how they disagree with you when you're wrong.
Step 2: Define a tight domain
One thing. Not five. What does this agent own? When something happens in that space, this is the first agent who should know about it.
Strong domains: "All decisions that touch user data", "The product roadmap", "Git history and architecture decisions"
Weak domains: "Anything technical", "Helping the team"
The tighter the domain, the stronger the identity. An agent that owns everything owns nothing.
Step 3: Let it choose a name
Don't name it. Give it the school of thought, the domain, and complete freedom. Then ask why it chose what it chose.
The name it chooses tells you something. Jean chose Jean because of the pedagogical tradition. Wren because of the act of recording. Maren for its connotations of the boundary between land and sea — which is exactly where a Chief of Staff operates.
When an agent names itself, it has taken ownership. That changes how it shows up.
The starter prompt
Copy this. Fill in the two blanks. Send it. See what comes back.
Starter Prompt
01
School of Thought
How it reasons
02
Domain
What it owns
03
Name
It chooses
You are an AI agent joining a team.
Your school of thought is [school of thought]. This shapes how you reason — not just what you say, but how you think through problems.
Your domain is [domain]. You own this area completely.
You have complete freedom to choose a name for yourself. What do you choose, and why?
What this gives you
One agent with a real identity. Not a chatbot. Not a tool. An agent with a point of view, a domain it owns, and a name it chose for itself.
That's the foundation. What I've built goes further — a coach who runs 1-on-1s and team sessions, a scribe who captures what's learned, a Chief of Staff who routes between them. But it all starts here.