The Orchestrator's Guide
Getting Started With AI Agents
What they are, how to direct them, and how to build your first one.
By Stu Jordan · Evolution Unleashed
An Agent Is A Digital Employee
An AI agent is software you direct like an employee. You tell it who you are, what you need done, and what the finished result looks like. Then it goes and does the work. This guide walks you through that process in four steps, and by the end you will have a working agent delivering real output.
Using AI
You do the work, with AI helping along the way.
Directing An Agent
You delegate the work. The agent executes and reports back. You stay in control.
You already use AI to write content, generate images, and get things done. An agent takes that further. You hand it a complete assignment, it executes the work, and reports back with the finished result. You review, refine, and direct the next move. That is orchestration: you stay in control while the agents do the work.
What Agents Can Actually Do
A single agent can handle any of these. You write one instruction, and it delivers a finished result.
Deep Research
Hundreds of pages distilled into a strategic brief in minutes.
Full Websites
A complete site from a description typed on your phone. Live and functional.
Data Analysis
Raw spreadsheets transformed into visual reports with clear insights.
Monitoring
Competitors, trends, and pricing changes tracked automatically on a schedule.
Content Systems
Research, draft, edit, and format an entire content calendar from one briefing.
Full Workflows
Multi-step processes that used to take a full day, handled start to finish.
Everything above is what a single agent can do on its own. The next step is using specialized agents, where each one handles a different part of a larger job. Beyond that, you coordinate entire swarms of agents that run complex operations without you touching them. The person directing all of this is called an orchestrator, and that is what this guide is building you toward.
Single Agent
One agent, one job. Where everyone starts.
Example: "Build me a complete marketing campaign for this product launch."
Specialized Agents
Different agents, each with their own task, working on parts of a bigger job.
Example: One agent researches competitors. Another writes the copy. A third builds the landing page.
Agent Swarms
Coordinated teams of agents running entire operations on autopilot.
Example: A swarm that monitors your industry, writes weekly content, publishes it, and tracks performance.
The Orchestrator's Toolkit
The quality of what an agent produces depends on what you give it. There are three layers, and they work together: context at the base, skills in the middle, and clarity of vision at the top.
Start Here
Write a context document for your business. Open a blank document and answer four questions: What do you do? What is your core offering? Who do you serve? How do you talk to them? Save it as a file you can paste into any agent workflow.
This is the foundation every agent will use. An agent writing your marketing copy needs to know your audience and your voice. An agent building your website needs to know your positioning. Write the context once, and every agent you run from that point forward gets better.
Skills are pre-built instruction sets you attach to an agent so it knows how to handle a specific type of work. Instead of explaining your brand voice every time, you write it once as a skill and reuse it. Platforms like AgentGuru.ai (coming soon) will let orchestrators share and download skills the community has built.
Clarity of vision means knowing what the finished product looks like before you tell the agent to start. If you can describe the format, the tone, the length, and the audience, the agent will deliver something usable on the first run. Vague instructions produce vague results. Specific instructions produce specific results.
The orchestration cycle: direct, execute, refine
Developing clarity takes practice. Evolution Unleashed Patreon members at the VIP Mastermind tier get access to the Agent Workflow Generator, which walks you through defining your vision step by step and outputs agent-ready instructions. See what's included
Your First Agent
The best place to run your first agent is Manus. It was built for giving agents complex tasks, and you can watch the agent think, plan, and execute in real time.
Your Daily Industry Briefing
Below is a complete, ready-to-use workflow. It creates a daily industry briefing tailored to your business. Here is what you do: copy it, paste it into Manus, replace the [placeholders] with your own details, and hit run.
Five minutes of setup. From that point on, a personalized briefing lands in your inbox every morning without you lifting a finger.
I run [describe your business in one sentence]. My core offering is [your main service or product]. The audience I serve is [describe your ideal customer]. My industry is [your niche].
Every morning, scan the most relevant news sources for my industry and surface the stories that would affect my business or my clients. Focus on platform changes, regulatory updates, emerging trends, notable campaigns, and competitive moves.
Deliver a briefing document with a maximum of five stories. For each story include the source name, a two-sentence summary written for someone who understands the industry, and one sentence explaining why this matters for my business specifically. Keep the entire briefing under 500 words. Tone should be direct and practical. Schedule this to run daily.
This section keeps the agent on track when it runs repeatedly. You can paste it exactly as written.
Stable prefix: Keep Context, Objective, Mode unchanged across runs. Exclude volatile data such as timestamps, random IDs, and one-off run labels from the stable prefix.
Sub-task drift control: At the start of every sub-task, re-read Context, Objective, Mode. Open /workspace/assets/TODO.md. Write one line titled Objective Check stating the exact TODO item being executed and the asset it contributes to. If no TODO item applies, create one that directly advances the Objective before doing any work.
TODO.md: Maintain /workspace/assets/TODO.md as the authoritative checklist. Add newly discovered sub-tasks as items. Mark items complete only after the corresponding artifact is saved and referenced.
Asset storage: Persist outputs to /workspace/assets. Reference file paths in the output.
Observations and errors: Log runtime errors, tool failures, and key observations in chronological order. Keep prior entries visible.
Tool policy: Use available tools to validate and gather data. Keep tool calls minimal and purposeful. When a tool fails, log the error and choose an alternate path.
A focused daily briefing delivered before your morning coffee. Five stories, each with a source, a summary, and a note on why it matters to your business. The kind of summary that would take 45 minutes to compile by hand. Set this to run on a schedule and it arrives every morning automatically. That is your first working agent.
Tomorrow Morning
Your first briefing arrives. You will immediately see what the agent understood and where it could be sharper.
The Orchestration Cycle
Run the agent. Review the output. Refine the instructions. Each cycle makes it sharper. This is how orchestration works.
If the first result is off, adjust the wording in Context or Mode and run it again. Every iteration makes the instructions sharper. That is the normal process.
What You Now Know
An agent is a digital employee
You describe who you are, what you need, and what the result looks like. The agent does the rest.
Agents handle real work
A single agent builds entire marketing campaigns. Specialized agents divide larger jobs between them. Swarms run full operations on autopilot.
Three layers drive quality
Context at the base, skills in the middle, clarity of vision at the top. Start by writing a context document for your business.
You have a ready-to-use workflow
Paste it into Manus, fill in your details, and schedule it. Your first orchestrated system starts running tomorrow morning.
You will learn more building your first agent than from any guide. Open Manus, paste the workflow, and start.
By Stu Jordan · Evolution Unleashed