Is this tool a good fit to delegate to? Seven questions before you connect it

Not every tool or service is worth connecting to an assistant, and not every task is worth handing off. A few questions, asked before you set anything up, can save a lot of rework.

We’re the Octuo team. Octuo is a personal assistant and one starting point for work across AI, tools and specialist services, and it hands work to the supported tools and services you connect and authorize, so these questions matter to us. They apply just as well if you’re wiring things together yourself.

Question 1: Are the inputs clear?

Can you say what the tool needs (files, settings, instructions) in a few lines? If not, tighten the task first.

Question 2: Can you check the result?

A result you can verify is a result you can trust. Decide the check first: totals reconcile, tests pass, every question has an owner.

Question 3: Can you see progress?

A long job needs a status you can read without interrupting it: running, waiting, done, and what it is waiting on.

Question 4: What access does it need?

Grant the minimum the job needs, and revisit it when the job changes. Ideally the assistant can use access without the model itself reading a raw secret. In Octuo, you grant the permissions, and credentials live in an encrypted Secrets Vault the language model never sees.

Question 5: What happens if it goes wrong?

Sort actions by reversibility. Drafting and sorting are easy to redo. Sending, deleting and paying are not, so keep those behind a person’s yes.

Question 6: What does it cost, including outside your assistant?

A tool or service you connect usually has its own subscription or usage charge. Count it. In Octuo’s case, external subscriptions and Octuo usage are separate costs, and cost is previewed before and reported after every turn.

Question 7: Does it recur?

A one-off rarely repays the setup. A weekly chore does, and recurring work is where scheduled routines and skills come in.

What extensibility looks like in Octuo

In Octuo, skills, sub-agents, scheduled routines and integrations can be added and changed by you, or by Octuo when you ask. Supported specialist tools on your computer, such as coding agents like Codex or Claude Code (named only as examples), can become something Octuo hands work to once you’ve installed, set up and authorized them, and Octuo can operate outside solutions on your behalf under the permissions you grant.

Reading your score

A tool and task that answer well on all seven are ready to delegate. One that answers badly on two or three is a signal to tighten the task or wait, not to connect it and hope.

Octuo is available for macOS. Take a look at how it works.