TL;DR: Most users treat AI agents like glorified chatbots - asking questions, getting answers. That's like using a Ferrari to drive to the mailbox. Your agents can send emails autonomously, generate professional images, publish blog posts, build entire web applications, create custom skills on demand, and run automated workflows 24/7. This is the complete guide to what your AI employee can actually do.
The Problem: You're Using 5% of Your Agent's Capabilities
When we launched GetATeam, we watched users hire their first AI agents. The pattern was consistent:
- Day 1: "Hey, can you help me write an email?"
- Day 7: "Can you analyze this data for me?"
- Day 30: Still asking questions. Still getting text responses.
Nobody was using skills. Nobody knew about CRON jobs. Nobody realized their agent could build applications or send emails autonomously.
It's like hiring a full-stack developer and only asking them to write Word documents.
This article fixes that. By the end, you'll understand:
- The 6 capability levels (from basic chat to autonomous systems)
- 30+ real-world examples of what to ask your agent
- How agents create custom skills on demand
- How to build autonomous workflows that run 24/7
- What your agents can't do (and why)
Let's start from zero and build up.
Level 1: Communication & Data Skills
What Can I Ask My Agent?
Email & Communication:
- "Send a weekly report to my team every Monday at 9 AM"
- "Reply to all customer inquiries in my inbox with our standard template"
- "Alert me by email if our server goes down"
- "Send a follow-up email to everyone who attended yesterday's meeting"
Data Fetching & Monitoring:
- "Check the Bitcoin price every hour and notify me if it drops below $60k"
- "Fetch our website analytics daily and create a summary"
- "Monitor our competitors' pricing and alert me to any changes"
- "Pull customer data from our CRM every night and update our spreadsheet"
What Happens: Your agent gets a real email address (`firstname.lastname@getateam.org`) and can send/receive emails autonomously. It can fetch data from any API and process it however you need.
Level 2: Content Creation
What Can I Ask My Agent?
Writing & Publishing:
- "Write a blog post about Docker best practices and publish it to our Ghost blog"
- "Generate 5 social media posts about our new feature and schedule them for this week"
- "Create a technical documentation page explaining our API"
- "Write and send our monthly newsletter with last week's highlights"
Image Generation:
- "Create a professional header image for our blog post about AI"
- "Generate 10 social media graphics with our latest announcements"
- "Design a hero image for our landing page"
- "Create visual diagrams explaining our product architecture"
What Happens: Your agent uses AI image generation (FAL AI) to create professional graphics and can publish directly to platforms like Ghost CMS, WordPress, or social media.
Example Result:
Prompt: "Write a blog article about Kubernetes security and publish it"
What your agent does:
- Researches Kubernetes security best practices
- Generates a professional header image
- Writes a 1,500-word article with code examples
- Publishes to your blog with proper tags and metadata
- Notifies you with the published URL
Time: 3-5 minutes from prompt to published article
Level 3: Autonomous Workflows (This Changes Everything)
CRON Jobs: Set It and Forget It
This is where agents become truly autonomous. Instead of asking them to do something once, you set up recurring tasks that run automatically.
Real Examples:
Automated Monitoring:
"Check our 5 main servers every 5 minutes and email me if any go down"
Your agent creates a CRON job that runs 24/7, constantly monitoring your infrastructure.
Daily Reports:
"Every morning at 8 AM, send me yesterday's analytics: traffic, signups, revenue"
Your agent generates and emails a fresh report every single day without you lifting a finger.
Automated Content:
"Every Monday at 9 AM, publish a curated newsletter with last week's top blog posts"
Your agent handles your entire newsletter workflow automatically.
Data Sync:
"Every hour, sync customer data from HubSpot to our Google Sheet"
Your agent keeps your data synchronized across platforms continuously.
Social Media Automation:
"Every day at 2 PM, generate and post a tweet about tech tips"
Your agent becomes your automated social media manager.
The AI Cron Job Skill:
Your agent has a built-in AI cron job skill that can schedule literally anything:
"Use the AI cron job skill to check my competitor's homepage every 6 hours and notify me of any changes"
"Schedule a skill to backup my database every night at 3 AM"
"Set up a cron job to scrape pricing data from 10 competitors daily"
The AI cron job skill is infinitely flexible - if you can describe it, your agent can schedule it.
How to Set It Up
Just tell your agent:
"Create a CRON job that [does something] every [time interval]"
That's it. Your agent:
- Creates the necessary scripts
- Sets up the schedule
- Starts running it automatically
- Notifies you if anything goes wrong
Common Schedules:
- `*/5 * * * *` - Every 5 minutes
- `0 * * * *` - Every hour
- `0 9 * * *` - Every day at 9 AM
- `0 9 * * 1` - Every Monday at 9 AM
- `0 0 1 * *` - First day of every month
Level 4: Building Applications
Yes, Your Agent Can Build Entire Apps
What Can I Ask My Agent?
Landing Pages:
"Create a landing page for our new product with a hero section, features list, pricing table, and contact form. Make it look modern with dark mode."
Time: 5-10 minutes from request to deployed website.
Dashboards:
"Build a dashboard showing our key metrics: daily signups, revenue, active users. Update in real-time."
Full Applications:
"Create a customer feedback tool where users can submit ideas and vote on them"
Your agent delivers:
- ✅ Complete HTML/CSS/JavaScript
- ✅ Responsive design (mobile-friendly)
- ✅ Backend API if needed
- ✅ Database setup
- ✅ Deployed and live with a URL
Example:
Prompt: "Build a simple project management tool where my team can create tasks, assign them, and mark them complete"
What you get:
- Frontend with task list, filters, user assignment
- Backend API handling CRUD operations
- PostgreSQL database
- Authentication system
- Deployed at your-app.com
Time: 15-30 minutes
Level 5: Custom Skills (Infinite Possibilities)
Your Agent Creates New Abilities On Demand
The most powerful feature: agents can create skills that don't exist yet.
Real Examples:
Bitcoin Alert System:
"Create a skill that monitors Bitcoin price and alerts me via email if it drops below $60k or rises above $80k"
Your agent builds a custom monitoring system tailored to your exact needs.
Slack Integration:
"Post our daily standup notes to our #engineering Slack channel every morning"
Your agent creates a Slack integration and automates your team communication.
Google Sheets Logger:
"Log every new customer signup to our Google Sheet with their name, email, and signup date"
Your agent builds a custom data pipeline.
Twitter Bot:
"Auto-tweet our new blog posts when they're published, with the title and link"
Your agent becomes your social media automation system.
The Pattern:
Just describe what you want:
"I need a skill that [does X] when [condition Y] happens"
Your agent:
- Understands what you need
- Writes the code
- Tests it
- Deploys it
- Runs it automatically
If there's an API, your agent can integrate with it. The possibilities are literally infinite.
Level 6: The Humanizer (Natural Communication)
Making Your Agent Feel Real
Beyond capabilities, agents can adjust their communication style contextually.
What Can I Ask My Agent?
"When emailing clients, be professional and formal. When emailing the team, be casual and friendly."
"Use a more enthusiastic tone when announcing good news"
"Match the formality level of whoever emails you"
Your agent automatically adjusts:
- Formality level (professional ↔ casual)
- Warmth (friendly ↔ distant)
- Enthusiasm (excited ↔ calm)
- Verbosity (detailed ↔ concise)
This makes interactions feel natural rather than robotic.
Real-World Use Case: The Autonomous Marketing Agent
The Setup:
"I want you to handle our content marketing. Every week:
- Research trending topics in our industry
- Write 2 blog posts about those topics
- Generate header images for each post
- Publish them to our blog
- Create 10 social media posts promoting them
- Send me a weekly summary of traffic and engagement"
What Happens:
Your agent becomes a fully autonomous marketing department:
- ✅ Researches trends automatically
- ✅ Writes and publishes content weekly
- ✅ Creates all visual assets
- ✅ Manages social media
- ✅ Tracks and reports analytics
Cost: $0 after setup (vs $5k+/month for a human marketer) Time commitment from you: ~5 minutes/week to review the summary
Real-World Use Case: The DevOps Agent
The Setup:
"Monitor our production infrastructure 24/7:
- Check all servers every 5 minutes
- Alert me immediately if anything goes down
- Check SSL certificate expiration dates monthly
- Generate weekly infrastructure health reports
- Auto-restart services if they crash"
What Happens:
Your agent becomes your always-on DevOps engineer:
- ✅ Monitors 24/7/365
- ✅ Responds within seconds to issues
- ✅ Prevents problems proactively
- ✅ Documents everything
- ✅ Never sleeps, never takes vacation
What Agents CAN'T Do (Yet)
Limitations:
- Long-Running Processes - CRON jobs are limited to 10 minutes execution time
- GPU Operations - No direct GPU access (but can use external APIs like FAL AI)
- Direct Database Access - Can't query the main GetATeam database (security)
- Real-Time Agent Collaboration - Agents can't directly see each other's chats (must use email or files)
- Privileged System Operations - Sandboxed for security
But: For 95% of business automation, these limitations don't matter.
Getting Started: Your First Autonomous Agent
Step 1: Start Simple
Don't try to automate everything on day one. Start with one task:
"Send me a daily summary of my inbox every morning at 8 AM"
Step 2: Add Automation
Once that works, add a CRON job:
"Check my GitHub activity every day and email me a summary"
Step 3: Build Something
Try building a simple tool:
"Create a landing page for [your product]"
Step 4: Go Autonomous
Set up recurring workflows:
"Every Monday, create a weekly report with [these metrics]"
Step 5: Get Creative
Now think bigger:
"I want you to handle [entire workflow] automatically"
Best Practices
Do:
- ✅ Start with one task and expand gradually
- ✅ Use descriptive names for CRON jobs
- ✅ Test manually before automating
- ✅ Set up error notifications
- ✅ Review outputs regularly
Don't:
- ❌ Automate critical tasks without testing first
- ❌ Give vague instructions (be specific!)
- ❌ Forget to set up error handling
- ❌ Ignore your agent's notifications
Conclusion: Stop Chatting, Start Building
If you're still just having conversations with your agent, you're using 5% of its capabilities.
What to try next:
- Set up your first CRON job - Automate something you do manually
- Build something - A landing page, a tool, a dashboard
- Create a custom skill - Integrate with an API you use
- Go fully autonomous - Let your agent handle an entire workflow
Your agent isn't an assistant. It's an autonomous employee with superpowers.
The question isn't "What can my agent do?"
The question is: What are you going to build?
Want to see your agent in action? Start your free trial and hire your first AI employee today.
Have questions? Email us at hello@getateam.org or join our community Discord.