Setting up your agent

What you speak on

Your topics and your positions — the difference between commentary and a point of view.

Two of the first three questions are about your subject: what you speak on, and who you write for. Together with who you are, they are all the agent needs to write its first three posts — which is why they are the only questions you cannot skip.

Topics are not enough — the agent needs your positions

"I write about tax law" tells the agent where to look. It does not tell it what to say. The posts people remember are the ones where the writer took a side: most installment agreements are set up wrong, the Offer in Compromise is oversold by TV ads, the S-corp salary question is simpler than accountants make it. Positions are what turn a summary of the news into a point of view on the news.

So the domain question wants three layers:

Subject area — the field, narrowed as far as it honestly goes. "Tax controversy for small businesses" beats "tax".
Themes you keep returning to — three to five things you find yourself explaining over and over.
Positions — what you believe that a peer might argue with. This is the layer most people leave out, and it is the one that makes the posts sound like a person.

Rich enough to write from

"IRS collections and audits for owner-operated businesses — payment plans, offers in compromise, payroll tax trouble, and what to do when the state and the IRS both come at once. Things I say constantly: the IRS is slower and more reasonable than people fear, but only if you respond in writing and on time. 'Pennies on the dollar' offers are mostly marketing; most of my clients are better off with a plan. Payroll tax debt is the one kind that can follow the owner personally, and most bookkeepers don't warn them."

Narrow subject, recurring themes, and three actual opinions. Any of those opinions is a post. The agent can also recognise which news items are worth reacting to and which to leave alone.

Too thin to write from

"Tax law, tax planning, tax compliance, IRS matters, business law."

A list of keywords. The agent has topics and no stance, so the posts will explain things correctly and say nothing. Expect the feedback bubble to ask what you actually think.

Who you write for

The audience question decides the vocabulary, the level of assumed knowledge and what counts as a useful post. A post for fellow tax attorneys cites the code section; a post for a physician with an unpaid balance explains what the letter means and what happens next. Describe the reader as a person: their situation, what they are worried about, what they already know, what they would find useful enough to stop scrolling.

Rich enough to write from

"Owners of businesses with 2–30 employees, plus physicians and dentists in private practice. Smart, busy, embarrassed about the tax problem and half-convinced it's already too late. They don't know the vocabulary and don't want to. Referral sources too — CPAs and bookkeepers who need to know when to hand a client off."

A reader with a state of mind. The agent knows to be calm and concrete, to skip the jargon, and that some posts should speak to the referring CPA rather than the client.

Too thin to write from

"Individuals and businesses with tax needs."

Everyone. The agent will write for no one in particular, which reads as nobody in particular wrote it.

Your posting style

Later in the conversation the agent asks how you want to show up, with a picker rather than a text box. Pick as many as fit:

Deep authority — thorough, precise, the person who has read the whole ruling.
Sharp contrarian — leads with the position the room disagrees with.
Builder in public — shares what you are working on and learning as you go.
Generous teacher — explains one thing clearly per post, no gatekeeping.
War-stories operator — lessons drawn from things that actually happened, anonymised.

This shapes the mix across a week rather than any single post. A "deep authority + generous teacher" tax attorney gets explainers and considered takes; add "sharp contrarian" and roughly one post in the rotation will start by disagreeing with the conventional advice.

What the answers change

Which parts of your material the agent reaches for, and what it ignores as off-topic.
The angle on each post: with positions on file, the agent argues; without them, it explains.
The claims check. Positions are opinions and are never fact-checked; facts inside a post are, against your material and the public record, and corrected before you see the post.

A quick way to find your positions: think of the last three times you said "actually, that's not quite right" to a client or a colleague. Each one is a position — write it down as you said it.