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Briefing an agent with evidence, not adjectivesGive it the sources, not the vibes

An agent asked to "improve the page" will improve something. Point it at the four pages that beat you instead.

Jonathan Boshoff · 7 September 2026 · 6 min read

This is placeholder copy for a guide about briefing agents. It exists so the layout can be reviewed with something the length of a real article in it. Swap it for the real thing before this page goes anywhere near a reader.

What the assistant is doing

Evidence in, changes out. Before it answers, the assistant rewrites the question into its own searches, runs them, and reads a handful of pages. The answer is assembled from what it read, which is why the page matters more than the prompt.

The practical version of that: you are not optimising for a person typing a question. You are optimising for the search the assistant typed on their behalf.

Where people go wrong

Most of the advice in this area is confident and untested. The three habits worth dropping first:

  • Writing for a keyword that no assistant ever searches for.
  • Treating a mention in an answer as the same thing as a recommendation.
  • Changing a page and never checking whether the change did anything.

What to do instead

Start from the answer. Find the query the assistant actually ran, read the pages it cited, and ask what those pages have that yours does not. Usually it is something dull: a clearer heading, a number with a source on it, a date that is real.

Then change one thing, leave a control alone, and look again in a month. That last step is the one everyone skips.

The short version

briefing agents is not mysterious. It is a retrieval problem wearing a new coat, and the work is mostly making a page easy to quote and easy to trust.

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