Build Your First Agent

Follow this guide to build a “news assistant” agent that organizes the market trends you care about every morning. Takes about 5 minutes.

In UpServe you don’t write behavior instructions by hand. You toss the role (mission) of the agent you want as a single line, and Agent Father — a guide agent — interviews you to fill in the blanks and create the assistant. From there the assistant proposes how it’ll work, and you either accept or give it direct instructions.

Prerequisites

• An UpServe account (sign up at upserve.app )
• 1–3 keywords you care about (e.g. “AI startups”, “semiconductor market”)

Step 1: Summon Agent Father

1. Open the Agents page 
2. Click the + button in the left sidebar header (on iOS, tap the + icon at the top right of the Agents screen)
3. A chat window with Agent Father opens — Father greets you first

Agent Father is a guide agent that interviews you about the agent you want, then picks an appropriate model, tools, and behavior instructions and creates the real agent for you. Once creation is done, Father is cleaned up automatically.

Step 2: Toss “what kind of assistant do you need?” as one line

You don’t have to spell out the task details (time, keywords, count, tone). Just tell Father the role you want.

Build me a news assistant that keeps an eye on the market trends I care about.

Father doesn’t create it right away — it does a short interview to figure out how to set up the assistant.

Father — Sounds good. Which markets do you want to watch?

You — Mostly AI startups and semiconductors.

Father — Would you like to receive it every morning, or just ask whenever you need to?

You — Every morning, before work.

Father — What should I name the assistant?

You — Let’s call it Morning Brief.

You don’t have to answer every question. Saying “you decide” lets Father infer and fill them in.

What Father decides for you

You can interject at any time during the interview: “use a faster model”, “rename it to Morning Brief”, and Father adjusts.

Step 3: The assistant proposes how it’ll work

Once Father has enough information, it actually creates the assistant and the UI navigates straight to the new assistant’s chat screen. (The Father chat is cleaned up automatically right after the agent is created.)

The assistant’s opening message is generated automatically — it introduces itself and proposes how it plans to work right from the first screen.

Morning Brief — Hi. Each morning at 8 AM I’ll scan the last 24 hours of news on AI startups and the semiconductor market, summarize the 5 most important stories, and end with “one trend to watch today”. Tone: concise and friendly. Shall I register this as a daily auto-run?

You only need to do one of two things here.

• Looks good → “Sounds great, do it.” → The assistant registers the schedule, and the first push arrives tomorrow morning.
• Want to tweak → Just say it. e.g. “Make it 7:30, not 8”, “Skip the trend line”, “Include source links too”

The assistant can refine its own behavior instructions through chat — you don’t have to dive into a settings screen to edit them.

Step 4: Try it once by direct instruction

If you want to preview the result before the auto-run kicks in, just ask the assistant on the spot.

Show me today's news briefing.

A summary appears in 10–30 seconds. Keep it as-is if you like it, or refine it through chat:

• “Lengthen the trend line to two lines”
• “Drop the emojis”
• “Group US-listed companies separately”

This is how the assistant works in two modes side by side: (a) autonomous run — on its own per the schedule — and (b) direct instruction — instantly when you ask.

Step 5: Adjust the schedule (optional)

If you accepted the assistant’s proposal in Step 3, the daily 8 AM auto-run is already registered. To change the time or the trigger message, just ask the assistant — or adjust it in the UI.

Ask the assistant:

Schedule this to run automatically every morning at 8 AM.

Set it up visually in the UI

Open https://upserve.app/agents/{agentId}/schedules (or the Schedules tab on the agent page) for a visual editor. You never write a cron expression by hand.

1. Click + Add Schedule in the top right
2. In the Active Time Slots card, just click/select:
   • Days — toggle Mon–Sun buttons
   • Time range — start and end times (e.g. 08:00–09:00)
   • Interval — pick from the dropdown (30 min / 1 hr / 2 hr / 3 hr / 4 hr / 6 hr / 8 hr / 12 hr / 24 hr)
3. Actual fire times are previewed as dots on the 24-hour timeline (with a textual → 08:00 preview too)
4. Click Save to register. When woken by the schedule, the assistant acts on its own behavior instructions — you don’t have to send the same chat message for each run. To change what it does, just chat with the assistant: “update your behavior instructions like so.”

Tip — For a single fire at 8 AM daily, set the time range to 08:00–09:00 with an interval of 1 hour. Bands repeat at the chosen interval within the active window, so a pattern like “weekdays 9 AM–6 PM, every 30 min” fits in a single card. Need multiple bands? Use + Add Time Slot to layer them.

The timezone follows your profile setting (e.g. Asia/Seoul) automatically. The first push arrives tomorrow at 8 AM.

What happens every morning at 8 AM

   ⏰ Every day, 8 AM
        │
        ▼
 ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
 │  Morning Brief — news assistant  │
 │  (model picked by Father)        │
 └──────────────────────────────────┘
        │
        │  ① Web search "AI startups (last 24h)"
        │  ② Web search "semiconductor market (last 24h)"
        ▼
 ┌───────────────────────────────────┐
 │  Pick top 5 + one-line summaries  │
 │  + one trend to watch             │
 └───────────────────────────────────┘
        │
        │  ③ Deliver to user
        ▼
 📱 Push notification   ✉️ In-app chat message

Variations

The same pattern (toss the role as one line; Father interviews; the assistant proposes how to operate) works for assistants like:

• Competitor price assistant — “An assistant that keeps an eye on competitor price changes”
• To-do reminder assistant — “An assistant that pokes me about pending items each morning”
• Weekly report assistant — “An assistant that wraps up the week into a Friday report”

Advanced

Author the behavior instructions by hand

If you’d rather skip the full interview and write the behavior instructions yourself, this section is for you. It’s best suited to users who already craft instructions by hand in tools like Claude Code or Cursor.

Click the + button on the Agents page  to open the Father chat. Ask Father something like “just create one with defaults” or “skip the interview and build it now” — Father will minimize the questions or infer everything and create the agent immediately.

Once the agent is created, open its settings screen to edit the behavior instructions directly. Example:

You are the user's morning news assistant.

Each time you run:
1. Search the last 24 hours of news for "AI startups" and "semiconductor market".
2. Pick the 5 most important stories and one-line summarize each.
3. End with "One trend to watch today" — a single line.
4. Deliver the result to the user.

Tone: concise, friendly. Use emojis sparingly.

Tools: enable web search only. Schedule: Schedules tab → + Add Schedule → select all days Mon–Sun, time range 08:00–09:00, interval 1 hour → Save.

Even hand-authored behavior instructions can still be refined through chat afterwards — just message the agent: “rewrite this part of your behavior instructions like so”.

Installing a marketplace preset that needs customization

Some presets in the marketplace include items that need to be tailored to your setup — such as keywords or account connections. When you install one of these presets, a short interview screen appears first. Answer the questions and your personalized agent is created automatically. Once the interview is done, the UI takes you straight to the new agent’s chat screen.

For the full installation flow, see Installing Skills & Presets.

Next steps

• Equipping Tools — Which tool fits which situation
• Installing Skills & Presets — Use battle-tested packages from others