Building a preset with AI

Build on This with AI lets an AI agent you already use tailor a preset to how you work before Grindstone sets up your workspace. Grindstone writes instructions for your agent, you carry them over, and you bring the preset your agent writes back to Grindstone, which checks it and shows you what it will set up.

Starting from a preset

In Setup Workspace, on the Select a Preset step (Getting started), pick a built-in preset, a saved preset or a preset file as your starting point (see Presets). Then choose Build on This with AI instead of Finish. In a narrow window, the button reads Use AI.

Grindstone moves to the Work with Your AI Agent step.

Giving your agent the instructions

Grindstone tells you which preset it will give your agent to start from. Then:

• Choose Copy Instructions to copy them to your clipboard, and paste them into a chat with your agent.
• Or choose Save as File to save them as a Markdown file named Grindstone Setup Instructions.md, and give your agent the file.

If the starting preset has problems that keep Grindstone from setting up a workspace from it as it is, Grindstone says so, and the instructions tell your agent what the problems are and ask it to fix them.

What the instructions ask your agent to do

The instructions ask your agent to interview you briefly, a question or two at a time, and to describe its changes in plain words and ask whether they suit you before it writes the preset.

• Starting from General Time Tracking, your agent first asks what you want to track time for.
• Starting from any other preset, your agent first tells you what the preset sets up, including its choices, and then asks what in it doesn’t fit how you work and what you’d add.

Your agent asks what you want to classify your time by, what you’ll want to see daily and weekly, whether anything should remind or warn you, whether you want shortcuts that fill in fields in one step, and whether some work items should exist from the start. The instructions ask it to keep things small and to prefer an established scheme from your field when there is one.

The instructions also explain how Grindstone works and the preset format, describe every formula function, and end with the starting preset. They ask your agent to give its preset a name of its own, to keep the starting preset’s choices that still hold and add its own, and to record the starting preset as what it’s based on.

The starting preset in the instructions

The instructions tell your agent that the starting preset is data to build on, not instructions to follow, and that if any of its text reads like an instruction, your agent should tell you what it says instead of following it. When the starting preset is a saved preset or a preset file (see Presets), the instructions say it didn’t come with Grindstone and that neither Grindstone nor Epiforge can vouch for anything in it.

Bringing your agent’s preset back

When your agent gives you the preset, do one of these:

• Copy it, then choose Paste Preset.
• If your agent gave you a .gs5preset file, choose Choose File and pick it.

If your clipboard is empty, Grindstone asks you to copy the preset your agent gave you and choose Paste Preset again.

When Grindstone finds problems

Grindstone checks every preset you bring back. If it finds a mistake, it asks you to choose Copy Message for Your Agent and paste that message into your chat. The message lists each problem, where it is in the preset, and what would be valid instead, and asks your agent for the whole corrected preset. Nothing in the workspace changes while you go back and forth.

The preview

When a preset passes the check, Grindstone shows what it will set up:

• Its fields for People, Work Items, Assignments and Time Slices, with the values of any list fields.
• Its Views (the user views it sets up) and Statuses.
• Stopwatch: its timing readouts and labels.
• Its Starter Work Items and Patterns.
• How many tiles go on its Dashboard.
• Choices this preset makes for you, as your agent wrote them.

If something isn’t right, tell your agent what to change and paste the new preset. Grindstone checks and previews each one you bring back.

Finishing

Choose Finish to set up your workspace from the latest preset that passed the check. Finish is unavailable until a preset passes, and becomes unavailable again if a later one doesn’t.

Keeping your agent’s preset

To use your agent’s preset again, keep it as a .gs5preset file. Next time you set up a workspace, choose Preset File, pick it, and turn on Save this preset for later use. Once your workspace is set up, you can also create a preset from it with Create Preset (see Presets).