What is your developer-dependent CMS actually costing you? Calculate your costs and get a full report
What is your developer-dependent CMS actually costing you? Calculate your costs and get a full report
AI Assistants
Say where, which items, what to do, the rules, what to leave alone and what to show you. Before and after examples, and how to review changes in Staging.
An AI assistant connected to Agility does what you ask, with your permissions. Most disappointing results come from requests that leave it guessing: which instance, which items, which fields, and whether it should only suggest changes or actually save them. This article shows how to write requests that get the right result the first time, with before and after examples you can adapt.
If you haven't connected an assistant yet, start with Using AI Assistants with Agility CMS. For ready-made requests for common jobs, see the recipes for SEO titles and descriptions, translations and content audits.
A good request answers six questions. You won't need all six every time, but the more of them you answer, the less the assistant has to guess.
| Part | The question it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Where | Which instance, locale, content list or sitemap? | "In the Marketing Site instance, en-us locale, Blog Posts list" |
| Which | Which items exactly? | "Posts published in 2025 with an empty Summary field" |
| What | What should it do: list, draft, save, or publish? | "Draft a summary for each. Don't save yet." |
| Rules | What must the result follow? | "Under 160 characters, plain language, only facts from the post" |
| Leave alone | What must not change? | "Only change the Summary field. Keep every other field exactly as it is." |
| Show me | What should it give back? | "A table with title, current summary, draft summary and character count" |
If you can reach more than one instance, an assistant without a named instance has to guess or ask. Content lists and sitemaps have names your team may use loosely, so use the name you see in Agility.
Before:
Find the blog posts with no summary.
After:
In the Marketing Site instance, en-us locale, look at the Blog Posts content
list and find the items where the Summary field is empty.
Don't change anything.
"All" is rarely what you mean, and big lists take time. Filter by date, by a field, by a page section, or by a number you can check.
Before:
Update the product pages.
After:
In the Marketing Site instance, en-us locale, list the pages under /products
on the website sitemap that were last modified before January 1, 2026.
Show me page name, path and last modified date. Don't change anything yet.
This is the most important part. Words like "fix", "clean up" and "update" don't say whether you want suggestions or saved changes. Say which.
Before:
Fix the meta descriptions on our blog.
After:
For each Blog Posts item where the SEO Description field is empty, draft a
description of 150 to 160 characters from the post's own text.
Show me the drafts as a table with character counts. Don't save yet.
Tell the assistant what "good" looks like: length, tone, audience, terms to use or avoid, and where its facts may come from. Examples work better than adjectives.
Before:
Make the case study summaries better.
After:
Rewrite the Summary field of the five newest Case Studies items.
Each summary: two sentences, under 200 characters, says who the customer is
and the result they got, uses only facts from the case study body.
Write "Agility CMS" in full the first time. No exclamation marks.
Here are two summaries we like, match their style:
- "..."
- "..."
Show me before and after side by side. Don't save yet.
When the assistant updates an item, it saves the whole item. Say which fields may change, and that everything else must stay as it is. Also tell it to skip items someone else is working on.
Only change the Summary field. Keep every other field exactly as it is.
Skip any item that already has unpublished changes in Staging.
Ask for output you can review quickly: a table, counts, and links to open each changed item in Agility.
When you're done, list what you changed with a link to open each item
in Agility, and list anything you skipped and why.
Break bigger jobs into read, draft, save:
If the assistant stops part way through a long list, say "Continue from where you stopped."
When the assistant saves, the change goes to Staging. Saving alone doesn't change your live site; if the item was already published, the live version stays as it is until someone publishes the new one. Before anything goes live:
Publishing includes nested linked content by default. If you, or the assistant, publish a page or content item, its nested linked content is published too, including saved changes nobody has reviewed. To publish only the item, tick Publish this item only in the Publish prompt. If you ask the assistant to publish, review the nested content first.
Only ask the assistant to publish when your organization has agreed that this kind of content can be published that way. See Choose how much the assistant does and When to Use AI, and When Not To.
In the [instance] Agility instance, [locale] locale, [content list or sitemap]:
Find [which items, with a filter].
For each one, [list / draft / save / publish] [what].
Rules:
- [length, tone, audience]
- [where facts may come from]
- [terms to use or avoid]
Only change [field names]. Keep every other field exactly as it is.
Skip any item that already has unpublished changes in Staging.
Show me [a table with these columns] [before saving / after saving],
with a link to open each item in Agility.