Lesson 06 · Activity 01

Assistant Spec Sheet

The fastest way to build a bad assistant is to open a builder and start typing. The fastest way to build a good one is to decide, on paper, exactly what it is for — before you touch any platform. This spec sheet walks you through the decisions every builder will ask you to make anyway, then generates a portable plan you can paste into a Custom GPT, a Gem, a Claude Project, or a Copilot agent without re-thinking a thing.

Five questions to settle first

Check each as you decide it. Your progress is saved on this device.

0 of 5 done

Purpose: what single, repeatable job does this assistant do? If you can't say it in one sentence, it's two assistants.
Audience: who talks to it — students, colleagues, or staff? This sets the tone and what it may reveal.
Grounding: which of your documents must it answer from, and which sensitive ones must stay out?
Guardrails: what must it never do — for example, complete graded work or guess at policy?
Success: how will you know it's working? Name one concrete test it must pass.

Spec builder

Fill in what you know. Empty fields are simply left out of the generated spec. Your entries are saved on this device until you change them.

Reflection

Which decision was hardest to pin down — and did writing it out change what you'll build?

Saved automatically on this device.

Why this comes first: Every minute spent on the spec is a minute you don't spend fighting a half-built assistant that does three jobs poorly. A one-sentence purpose and an explicit "never do" list are worth more than a long, vague instruction block — and they make the next two activities almost mechanical.