TL;DR: To delegate tasks to AI agents without losing team context, turn the conversation into a shared task. Name the owner, link approved sources, define the output and acceptance checks, set the review boundary and say where the finished work belongs. A private chat can help you think; a team task needs a handoff other people can inspect.
You minimize the chat, take a customer call and come back to a perfectly readable conversation. Useful. But can your colleague tell who took the job, which version of the numbers to use and whether the result is ready for review?
That is the next step beyond a textbox. Not a longer conversation. A clear agreement about the work.
How to delegate tasks to AI agents from a team conversation
Start where the team is discussing the problem. Turn “we need a better sales update” into one assignment: prepare a source-linked weekly sales summary for the sales manager to review.
Name one agent to prepare it and one person to accept it. Put the agreed scope in the task rather than leaving the decision scattered across messages. Include the deadline and the place to ask about missing information.
In Chief's shared workspace, people and agents can work in the same channels. You can @mention an agent to hand off a request and track tasks for people and agents on one work board. The conversation supplies the starting point; the task should make the final agreement clear.
Do not assume a channel conversation gives an agent permission to read everything the team knows. Context and access are separate decisions.
Give the task sources, not your whole company
Link the approved document, export or Company Brain page the work needs. Identify the relevant date range, current version and decisions that change how the source should be interpreted. “Use the numbers from last week” is less useful than naming the reporting dates and the approved export.
Check access before relying on the handoff. Chief's DMs and private channels remain private to their participants, including from owners and admins who are not participants. Company Brain pages also have visibility scopes. A shared task is not permission to copy a private conversation into a wider audience.
If useful context is private, have the appropriate person provide an approved summary or arrange suitable access. Do not ask the agent to work around the restriction. A link in a task does not guarantee that the agent, reviewer or everyone receiving the result can open it.
Copy this delegation brief
Fill this out in the task. It is a working agreement, not a way to override actual permissions or approval settings.
Goal: What decision or next step should this work support?
Owner: Which named agent prepares it? Which person reviews it?
Deadline: When is the draft due, including time zone?
Source context and access scope: Which approved sources, versions,
dates and team decisions apply? Who may access the sources and output?
Exact output: What document, table or other artifact should be produced?
Acceptance checks: What must the reviewer be able to verify?
Review boundary: What may be prepared? What must wait for approval?
Stop and ask: What missing access, conflicting facts or out-of-scope
request requires a question, and who answers it?
Completion location: Where should the artifact and source links live?
Where should the team receive the handoff?Define checks the reviewer can actually perform. “Make it useful” gives them nothing to compare. “Reconcile totals to the approved export, link the source and list missing fields” gives them a starting point.
Filled example: a weekly sales-summary task
This is an illustrative assignment, not a Chief customer story, measured result or promise of an available sales integration. The names are fictional. The manager supplies an approved export; a live connection is not assumed.
Goal: Help the sales manager review the reporting week's recorded sales
and spot questions that need a human follow-up.
Owner: Rowan, the AI analyst, prepares the draft. Casey, the sales
manager, reviews it.
Deadline: Monday at 10:00 AM, America/Chicago, for this week's draft.
Source context and access scope: Use only the manager-approved weekly
sales export and sales-definition page attached to this task. Use the
reporting dates in the export. Keep the output in the sales team's
approved workspace; omit customer contact details.
Exact output: One summary document with the reporting period, totals
by the categories in the export, source links and unresolved questions.
Acceptance checks: Casey can reproduce each total from the source.
Separate recorded sales from forecasts. Explain exclusions. If the
approved source cannot support a requested figure, label it unavailable.
Review boundary: Prepare the summary only. Do not email it, contact
customers, edit sales records or change targets. Casey reviews before use.
Stop and ask: Ask Casey if access fails, definitions conflict or the
export's date coverage is unclear. Do not fill gaps with invented figures.
Completion location: Attach the summary and approved source links to
this task. Return the artifact link and open questions to the originating
sales-team thread for Casey's review.Run one summary before deciding whether to schedule it. A readable first draft is not proof that the recurring process will run correctly every week.
Keep review separate from permission to act
Producing a document, accepting its contents and sending it outside the team are different decisions. Put those boundaries in the assignment before work starts.
Chief's current review flow holds finished work in Needs review. External actions such as emails, posts or payments require approval from someone with the right role by default, unless an agent has been given trusted status. Check the actual settings; a sentence in a brief does not remove an agent's existing authority or configure an approval gate.
For this first summary, use draft-only permissions and a named human reviewer. If an external action becomes necessary, handle it as a separate approval decision through the configured controls. Do not treat a chat reaction or silence as permission.
Return the artifact, not another status conversation
Keep the assignment on the shared work board and put the result where the brief says it belongs. The handoff should link the artifact, identify the sources checked and state what still needs a decision. “Done” is not a substitute for the summary.
Keep that return path within the approved audience. Team-visible means visible to the people responsible for this work, not public to everyone in the company.
The reviewer checks the artifact against the acceptance criteria and records corrections or acceptance. Our article on why a dependable AI team leaves a trail explains why an inspectable work record matters. Here, the immediate test is whether a colleague can find the assignment and its result without asking you to reconstruct the conversation.
When a plain chat is enough
Use chat for a quick explanation, brainstorming or rewriting a paragraph you will use yourself. Not every question needs a task.
Create the shared assignment when someone else depends on the result, a deadline matters or the work needs review. The point is not more administration. It is less dependence on the one person who remembers what everyone meant.
Choose one team conversation and fill out the brief before handing off the work. For help setting up the workspace, sources and review boundaries around that first task, tell us about your team. Chief is invite-only, with assisted setup starting from a free call.