Summary

  • 3 minutes

Delegating to Autopilot uses the same judgment you already apply with people. You worked out what was worth passing on, how much room to give it, and how closely to check what came back.

Priya delegated one responsibility. Her Autopilot tells her when a decision stalls, a date moves, or a risk comes up on the launch, and it suggests a next step. Nothing reaches anyone without her approval. Her one-time executive briefing went to Cowork, where it belonged.

Diagram of a repeating cycle: write the brief, grant authority, check the work, and adjust, with each pass needing less attention.

What you learned

  • Autopilot takes a standing responsibility, not a single task. It holds a target the way a thermostat does, rather than running once and stopping. It's personal, with its own identity and memory of your preferences. It's proactive, acting without being asked. It's persistent, holding context as work continues over days or weeks.
  • Match the work to the mode. Chat takes a question. Cowork takes a task with a finish line. Autopilot takes work that carries on, depends on noticing, can be described in advance, and costs you when you spot it late.
  • A good brief names four things. State what matters, what deserves your attention, what to do about it, and what needs your approval.
  • Decide how much authority to grant up front. Set its reach, what it can settle alone, who it can work with, and what should make it stop and ask. Two protections hold regardless: it works only inside the permissions you already have, and it asks before consequential actions.
  • Review in proportion to the risk, because accountability stays with you. Read anything others will see in full and verify summaries against the source. Autopilot's work carries its own identity, but the decision to delegate and the outcome remain yours.
  • Steer it as the work moves. Narrow a noisy brief, broaden one that misses things, pause it during a freeze, and retire it when the work ends. Those adjustments protect your attention and your budget, since Autopilot spends every time it acts rather than once at setup.

Learn more

Autopilot documentation is still rolling out. These articles cover the related Copilot modes: