How do I get AI agents to give me updates I can actually read?

My agents' updates were mostly good. They were just too long. Running a lot of chats at once, I was spending way too much time reading everything and not enough time making progress.

What should every update include?

What I call the bro version. Speak to me plainly, like a friend telling a friend:

• What's going on?
• Why did it happen?
• What was the impact?
• Did you fix it?
• What's next, and what should we do?
• What's your opinion?

Beginning, middle and end, in plain English. Bullets are fine for facts. But there has to be a part that explains what the AI just did in words a non-technical person gets.

Why does the recommendation matter so much?

Because unclear reports mean work doesn't ship. Every update should say the next steps, the options at minimum, and what it recommends. When that's missing, I don't even realize something wasn't done. That's why so many of my changes ended up never getting pushed.

"Remember, I'm non-technical. Just tell me: did you fix it, and is it working, or is there something else we have to do?"

The other rule: don't hand me chores. If the agent has the access, it handles it or figures it out. I want to be more of a verifier.

How short should updates be?

I didn't want to guess. I was scared to say make them 75% shorter, because sometimes I really do want all the details. Instead, I had the AI research its own last five days of chat responses, analyze what they actually looked like, and give me its best ideas for fixing it.

For one-off answers, I just say it: give me 30% less info, in markdown with bullet points, more concise and clear. I like using the word markdown with AI when I want a title and bullets instead of paragraphs, which are harder to read.

What format should agent messages use?

One standard for every agent in our team chat, as close to markdown as possible: big titles, bold subtitles, medium subtitles, bullet points, numbered sections, and no more than one sentence per line. If a message comes in as a wall of text, I'll never read it.

Where should agents post their briefs?

In a private briefing channel. Anything that's only for me, like daily briefs and personal to-do lists, doesn't belong in the general channel. I added all the agents to one channel that's just me, and they send their briefs there.

Then stack the briefs. Each product that matters gets a daily overview: how many leads came in, what people did, tech issues, work shipped and work outstanding. On top sits one briefing with the absolute most important info, good or bad. That one is for days when I have three minutes total instead of three to five minutes per email.

All of it should come from one place. Slack, Notion and email shouldn't each pull from different things in different ways. One step posts the information every day, and everything else reads from that same place.