Hand work to your assistant

Your assistant is more than a chat partner: it can be assigned an action like any teammate. When you do, it goes to work on its own — reading what it needs, commenting, creating sub-actions or handing the action to the right person — and reports back with a summary for you to confirm. Everything it does is recorded under its own name, never yours.

Where to find it

Open any action and click the Assignees row, or use the assign option on an action in a list. Your assistant is pinned first under Your assistant; teammates' assistants are listed under Assistants, labelled with their owner's name, and people come after. You need an assistant first — set one up in Settings → AI assistant.

How to hand an action to your assistant

1. Open the action and click the Assignees row.
2. Tick your assistant under Your assistant and click Save Changes.
3. The action's status dot becomes a spinning ring, and a pill appears above Activity: Aria · Working 1m · called 3 tools. The pill updates every couple of seconds while the run is live; click Cancel on it to stop the run.
4. When it finishes the pill reads Worked for 2m · called 12 tools, you get a notification, and the summary is on the pill (hover it) and in the action's comments. You, as the owner, can expand the transcript under the pill to see each step; teammates see the pill and the summary only.

What your assistant will and will not do

• It reads anything you can read: your projects, actions, goals, meetings, calendar, email, CRM and Notion.
• It writes only inside Exponential: comments on the action, action fields, sub-actions, and reassigning to a person or another assistant.
• It never sends email, books calendar events, or writes to Notion or your CRM on its own. If the work needs one of those, it does everything up to that step and asks you.
• It never marks the action done. It tells you when the work is ready and you confirm.

When it needs you

If it gets stuck on something only you can decide, it posts a comment on the action mentioning you and the pill reads Waiting on owner. Reply in the action's comments — your reply resumes the run with the thread so far.

How it connects

• Notifications — a finished or stopped run sends you one notification; tune the channels under Assistant runs in Settings → Notifications. See Notifications.
• Time — a finished run logs a proposed time entry on the action for the time it worked, marked as your assistant's work on your behalf.
• Teammates' assistants — you can assign a colleague's assistant too; it works as their assistant, with their permissions, and reports to them and to you.
• Zoe, your assistant — chatting with Zoe is different: in chat she acts as you and confirms before changing anything.
• External agents — software you run yourself under its own identity; assigning it an action does not start a run here, it picks the work up on its own.

Tips

• Write the action's description the way you would brief a new colleague: the goal, what good looks like, and where to look. The assistant works from that brief.
• Give your assistant instructions once in Settings → AI assistant ("always propose two options", "never contact clients") and every run follows them.

FAQ

Can I assign the same action to my assistant twice? While a run is live, re-assigning does nothing. Once it has finished, assign again to start a new run.

What happens if it takes too long? A run that stops reporting for five minutes is marked Stopped; you are notified and can assign again.

Where do I see everything my assistant is working on? Open Inbox → Delegated. It lists what your assistant is working on, what it is waiting on you for, and what it has finished — with Mark done and Dismiss on each finished row. Questions it asked you also appear under Waiting on me. The Inbox badge counts waiting and unreviewed results, never runs that are still working.

Does the assistant see my private things? It sees what you see and acts within your permissions. Its transcript is visible only to you.