/hire

name: hire
description: Hire one of the eight open source AI Employees (GTM Engineer, SEO/AEO, Web Dev, Social Media, Ad Manager, Sales, Customer Satisfaction, Chief of Staff) into a local folder, prove it runs, and hand over its install prompt. Also answers which one to hire first, how a hired employee runs on a schedule, how to direct it, how it improves from corrections, and how to upgrade it. Use when the user says hire an employee, install an AI employee, set up the GTM Engineer, names one of the eight, or asks how AI Employees work. It copies files and runs self tests only. It registers no schedule and sends nothing.

Hire an AI Employee

An AI Employee is a folder of plain markdown instructions and a few small Node scripts that covers one business role. Each routine in the folder runs on a schedule, on the user's own machine, through the agent they already use, and each weekday it leaves a short brief. The folder is the product. There is no service, no account and no runtime behind it.

Your job here is narrow and the same every time: put one employee folder in the right place, prove it runs, and hand over the install prompt with the path filled in. The install prompt then does the setup, in a fresh session opened in that folder. You do not run the install prompt yourself, you do not register any scheduled job, and you send nothing anywhere.

If the user is asking a question rather than hiring (which one first, how the schedule works, how it improves), answer from sections 1 and 8, then offer to hire.

1. Pick the employee

| Slug | Employee | Owns | Routines | Also called | |---|---|---|---|---| | `gtm-engineer` | GTM Engineer | Positioning, the launch board, outbound drafts, directory and press forms, the weekly scoreboard | 8 | GTM, go to market, launch, growth | | `seo-employee` | SEO/AEO Employee | Keyword research, one article a weekday, publishing, indexing, rank review, visibility in AI answers | 8 | SEO, AEO, search, content, blog | | `web-dev-employee` | Web Dev Employee | Site health, error triage, small changes on a branch, dependency review | 8 | web dev, developer, site maintenance | | `social-media-employee` | Social Media Employee | Posts drafted in the user's voice per platform, a veto window, replies drafted | 7 | social, social media, posting | | `ad-manager-employee` | Ad Manager Employee | Account reads, creative sets, build sheets, the weekly change list. Money moves only on approval | 7 | ads, paid, campaigns | | `sales-employee` | Sales Employee | Prospect sweeps, first touches into the user's own drafts, follow ups | 7 | sales, SDR, prospecting, outreach | | `customer-satisfaction-employee` | Customer Satisfaction Employee | Inbox sweep, replies drafted hardest first, churn flags with evidence | 8 | support, CSAT, retention | | `chief-of-staff` | Chief of Staff | Reads every other employee's run log, names what quietly stopped, brings three moves | 7 | chief of staff, COS, oversight |

If the request names one loosely, pick the obvious slug and say which you picked. If it names none, show this table and ask which. If they ask where to start:

• **Launching or growing something:** the GTM Engineer. It has the longest production record of the eight.
• **Traffic is the bottleneck:** the SEO/AEO Employee.
• **A live site that breaks quietly:** the Web Dev Employee.
• **Already running two or more:** add the Chief of Staff. It supervises the others and has nothing to read until they have run for a few days.

Hire one, let it run for a week, then hire the next. Each employee is its own folder with its own schedule, and their routine ids carry a prefix so they sit side by side without colliding.

2. Choose the folder

The user chooses. If they did not say, ask once and suggest `D:\AgentOps\<slug>` on Windows or `~/ai-employees/<slug>` on macOS and Linux. One folder per employee.

**Refuse any path under OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive or iCloud**, including one that only resolves into it. On Windows the Desktop and Documents folders are often redirected into OneDrive, so check the resolved absolute path, not the spelling. Say why in one sentence: the routines write their state and run log mid run, and a sync client can corrupt exactly the file that tells tomorrow's run what already happened. Then ask for another folder.

If the folder exists and is not empty, stop. Never copy over an existing install: its `strategy/`, `state/`, ledgers and `## Corrections` sections are the user's work. To update one, use the upgrade in section 8.

3. Copy it into place

Node 18 or newer is required. Check with `node --version` first; if it is missing or older, stop and point the user at https://nodejs.org and `docs/PREREQUISITES.md`.

Use the first route that works:

1. **The installer bundled with this skill.** When this skill loads you are told its base directory. The repository root is two levels up from it. If `<base directory>/../../installer/cli.mjs` and `<base directory>/../../employees/<slug>/CONTRACT.md` both exist, run, through the shell:

   node "<base directory>/../../installer/cli.mjs" hire <slug> --to "<folder>"

It copies the kit from the bundled files with no network, refuses a synced or non empty folder, writes `.installed.json` (the record that lets a later upgrade tell the user's edits from ours), runs every kit script's self tests, checks the login, and prints the install prompt with the path filled in. 2. **The published installer.** Inside the plugin route 1 always works, so this is for the skill used on its own. Tell the user it will fetch the `ai-employees` package from npm and wait for a yes, then run `npx ai-employees hire <slug> --to "<folder>"`. Same behaviour, fetched from npm. 3. **Only if neither can run:** tell the user you need to download `https://github.com/markfulton/ai-employees/archive/refs/heads/main.zip` and wait for a yes. Then extract only `employees/<slug>/` into the folder, and tell the user that thi