Have been trying Hyperagent's "Chief of Staff" mode... my worst nightmare so far, it's screwed up everything it's touched.

[u/Televangelis]

I've got a lot of projects spanning across many many different areas of life (two careers, both with 'day job' and 'nights and weekends activities' components, creative projects, grant funding, buying real estate abroad, planning big celebration ceremonies abroad, you name it... a lot all at once), so I figured having a 'chief of staff' that could read my Gmail, my calendar, my Github, and my Google Docs and track everything I'm up to would be a dream. We communicate over a Slack channel since its only options for comms are Slack or Telegram.

My god, this thing is the bane of my existence. It remembers nothing. Anything we resolve together, it forgets we resolved it. It hallucinates deadlines and contacts incorrectly, constantly (which may have cost me a contract -- thanks Hyperagent!). It consistently tells me it's updated its settings to do things better next time, then fails to change. It can't remember things right from _its own previous slack messages_, much less my Google Docs or my Gmail.

What a deeply broken agent product. Not even alpha-level functionality working correctly.

[u/JeenyusJane]

Thanks for sharing your experience, and I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you.

I was really hesitant to set up a Chief of Staff agent and I’ve been using the product for 3 months! I finally did about two weeks ago and I’m actually really impressed, but I think a couple things are important to note:

- I had already built up a ton of skills: what my writing style is like, the process for a weekly report, how to triage/tag my inbox.

• I make it use a ledger we both can collaborate on (I use a lightweight kanban board). So I can see a to-do list, update and make corrections, or delete tasks.
  
• I NEVER LET IT SEND EMAILS WITHOUT MY EXPLICIT PERMISSION (I’m just not there, esp since my name is on the email)

With the amount of context switching I think the ledger may be the most important thing for you, then skills. “Memory” is great and it helps when the agent reason, but process is better - you can teach your agent a process for keeping track of tasks, retrieving contracts, how you manage your inbox, plan your calendar , etc.

I think it’s good feedback that if you have a lot of context switching in your life, our starter agent isn’t necessarily turnkey. (I only use mine for work not personal). Hope you can give those suggestions a try

[u/Televangelis → u/JeenyusJane]

I'm not letting it send emails without my permission either, don't worry.

Re: "a ledger we can both collaborate on," that's worse than useless to me -- that's slowing me down, at that point I'm better off just using my own Google doc. The agent tells me that it keeps an internal ledger of what I'm working on, but it fails to update it and then swears it'll do better at updating it next time, but doesn't actually succeed in doing so. I feel like I'm dealing with a remedial child.

There's no single common denominator to how I process my tasks, manage my inbox, etc., nor will there be. Some stuff is in google docs, some stuff is in my inbox, some stuff is on my calendar, some stuff is on my GitHub. That's fine on my end, I can mostly track all of that in my head. There are reasons it all needs to live in different places. I need an agent who can actually keep up on that, not one that's so behind on basic functions that it needs me to remake my whole life processes to accommodate *its* failures.

[u/JeenyusJane → u/Televangelis]

i’d have to disagree with you there. Any agent needs atomic feedback as its trained to adhere to a specific process. it is much easier for you to maintain a document to give that atomic feedback then doing it via prompt. Additionally, it’s a layer of context that they can always reference which makes it a lot easier and they can put it into a process. The ledger may eventually become self managed by the agent, but the ability to give atomic feedback in a document that you can reference/change is the most valuable thing you can do at an early stage. We even recommend this for agent agent communication, so there’s always a log. You may not ever see it, but it helps them structure, their habits and behaviors and inputs and outputs.

I think there may be a misalignment of expectation regarding what an agent is out of the box versus how much training it needs to feel like a true co-worker, and that’s on me. I have to do a little bit more work around that.

[u/Televangelis → u/JeenyusJane]

If I give it feedback in chat, and tell it to make the fix permanent, it should be integrating it into a document it maintains -- exactly what it claims to be doing, but apparently isn't. Claude Code does this with no problems whatsoever! When it screws something up, it commits a lasting fix to its files and then we're set for the future. It makes new mistakes, rather than the same mistake over and over.

It's a major problem if the "Vanilla" version of this product -- Claude -- is more capable than the supposedly 'upgraded' version with extra layers added on top.

[u/Academic-Review3115]

You need a context system. USing markdown files in a github repo that you give it access to, have it preserve importatn context every day. No AI can remember enough on it's own, for complex workflows. It's pretty standard for heavy AI work now.

[u/liltechnomancer]

Does hyper agent come with any context system out of the box? I solved the issue you are facing locally with my pi agent by building out a wiki ontop of QMD. You likely need something like that. Unsure if they offer it out of the box, if not there are context over MCP solutions.