What is an AI agent, in plain terms?

A standing job you give to Bernard instead of a one-off question. "Watch my shop and tell me when sales go quiet" is an agent; "how were sales this month?" is a question. The work is the same - the difference is that you stop having to remember to ask.

Is it safe to let an AI watch my business?

The watching itself only reads your reports - nothing can change. If a check leads to a suggested fix on your site, that fix is prepared as a draft and waits for your approval on a preview page, the same as any other change.

Pressing the report buttons is free and always will be. Typed questions and standing jobs use a few shells per answer, the same as asking Bernard anything else in the workshop.

Do I need to be technical to set one up?

No. You describe the job in a sentence, the way you would brief a person. The examples in this section are ready to paste - change the bracketed parts and you are done.

Put an AI agent to work on my business

Most websites are treated like a book: you spend months getting it right, you publish it once, and you hope it sells. The businesses that grow online treat their site like a bookshop instead - the stock changes, the shelves get rearranged to match what people are asking for this season, and the window display changes to catch whoever is walking past this week.

A bookshop needs somebody minding it. Your site has Bernard. Give him the jobs a good shopkeeper does on quiet mornings - walking the shelves, counting the till, refreshing the window - and he brings you only the thing that needs its owner. That is all an agent is: a standing job instead of a one-off question.

Two ways to run a job

Ask on the spot. Open Reports and press a button, or type the question. That is the one-off version of every job on this page, and it is the best way to test a brief before you make it a routine.

Make it automatic. Give the standing instruction to the AI you already use - Claude and ChatGPT can both run tasks on a schedule - connected to your site with your connection key. On its schedule, it asks Bernard for your reports and sends you the note. You set the rhythm and the rule for when to speak; quiet weeks should cost you nothing to read.

The jobs owners hand over first

Watch my shop and tell me when sales go quiet - sales rhythm, failed payments, quiet streaks
Check my website automatically every week - broken links, odd pages, traffic dips
Tell me how my courses are doing without me asking - new students, stalled students, completions
Remind me when my website content is getting stale - pages going stale while still earning visits
Watch my Google results and tell me if they slip - search slipping before you would notice

What a good note looks like

One sentence of verdict, then only what changed: "A normal week - 3 orders, traffic steady. One thing: two people abandoned checkout on the same print; worth checking its price." If everything is fine, the whole note is one line saying so.

The honest limits

Bernard reports what your site and your figures can see. He cannot watch things that are not measured - a site without analytics turned on has no visitor numbers to report - and a standing job is only as good as its brief. Start with one job, read a few weeks of notes, then tighten what you asked for.

The prompt

“Set up a weekly check of my [shop / courses / traffic / content]. Each [Friday], tell me what changed, what needs my attention, and one thing worth doing next week.”

Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.

Questions people ask

What is an AI agent, in plain terms?: A standing job you give to Bernard instead of a one-off question. "Watch my shop and tell me when sales go quiet" is an agent; "how were sales this month?" is a question. The work is the same - the difference is that you stop having to remember to ask.
Is it safe to let an AI watch my business?: The watching itself only reads your reports - nothing can change. If a check leads to a suggested fix on your site, that fix is prepared as a draft and waits for your approval on a preview page, the same as any other change.
What does it cost?: Pressing the report buttons is free and always will be. Typed questions and standing jobs use a few shells per answer, the same as asking Bernard anything else in the workshop.
Do I need to be technical to set one up?: No. You describe the job in a sentence, the way you would brief a person. The examples in this section are ready to paste - change the bracketed parts and you are done.