Writing Good Requests

Rilo doesn’t need special syntax or commands. It understands plain language — but the quality of what it delivers depends heavily on how clearly you describe what you need.

The core principle: be specific about the outcome

Rilo will make reasonable choices wherever you leave things unspecified. That’s useful when the details don’t matter to you, but if they do matter, spell them out.

Research tasks
Data tasks
Writing tasks

Weak:

@Rilo research Acme Corp

Rilo will produce something, but you’ll get a general overview when you might have wanted something much more specific.Better:

@Rilo I have a renewal call with Acme Corp next week. Can you pull together:
- Their current headcount and recent growth signals
- Any news about them in the last 3 months
- Who their main decision-makers are (LinkedIn is fine)
- Whether they've posted any job openings that suggest expansion or contraction

Format as a short briefing I can read in 2 minutes.

Naming the context (“renewal call”), specifying the sources (“LinkedIn is fine”), and describing the format (“short briefing, 2 minutes”) all sharpen the result.

Weak:

@Rilo check our invoices

Better:

@Rilo In Stripe, pull all invoices from January that are marked paid. Cross-reference
them against the deals closed in HubSpot in the same period. Flag any where the
invoice amount doesn't match the deal value, and list the discrepancies in a table
with the deal name, invoice ID, deal amount, and invoice amount.

Naming the tools (Stripe, HubSpot), the time period (January), the specific action (cross-reference), and the output format (table with specific columns) leaves little room for misinterpretation.

Weak:

@Rilo draft outreach for this lead

Better:

@Rilo Draft a cold outreach email to Marcus Webb, VP of Operations at Thornfield
Logistics. Keep it under 100 words. The angle is that we help ops teams cut manual
reporting work — lead with that. Don't mention pricing. Sign it as me (Jamie).

Tone, length, angle, constraints, and sign-off — these are all things a person writing for you would need to know, and Rilo is no different.

Provide context Rilo can’t see

Rilo can access your connected tools, but it doesn’t know things that live only in your head. If the task involves a specific situation, relationship, or background — include it:

@Rilo We've been negotiating with Hargrove & Associates for three months. They've
been dragging their feet on contract review. Can you look them up and find any
recent news that might explain the delay — leadership changes, budget cycles,
anything like that.

@Rilo I need to prep for a difficult conversation. The candidate we're rejecting for
the senior engineer role has been in the process for 6 weeks. Can you draft a
rejection email that's warm but clear, and mentions we'll keep their details on
file for future roles?

Background context turns a generic output into something useful.

Specify format when it matters

If you’re going to paste results into a doc, send them to someone, or present them — say so:

summarize as 5 bullet points
put it in a table with columns for: name, title, email, LinkedIn
format as a Slack message, keep it conversational
write it up as a proper report with headings
give me just the numbers, no explanation needed

Tell Rilo what tools to use (or avoid)

If you have a preference for which tool Rilo should use for a task, say so:

@Rilo Find their contact info — check Apollo first, then LinkedIn if Apollo
doesn't have it.

@Rilo Don't use their website for this — it's outdated. Pull from LinkedIn
and Crunchbase only.

Ask for clarification up front

If you’re not sure whether you’ve given Rilo enough to go on, you can ask it to check before starting:

@Rilo Before you start — do you have everything you need for this, or do you
want me to clarify anything?

What Rilo will do when a task is ambiguous

If the task is too ambiguous to make a reasonable interpretation, Rilo will ask a clarifying question before proceeding. It won’t guess when getting it wrong would waste significant work. For shorter tasks, Rilo may make a reasonable assumption and proceed, then note what it assumed in the result.

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Security & Privacy

The core principle: be specific about the outcome

Provide context Rilo can’t see

Specify format when it matters

Tell Rilo what tools to use (or avoid)

Ask for clarification up front

What Rilo will do when a task is ambiguous

​The core principle: be specific about the outcome

​Provide context Rilo can’t see

​Specify format when it matters

​Tell Rilo what tools to use (or avoid)

​Ask for clarification up front

​What Rilo will do when a task is ambiguous

The core principle: be specific about the outcome

Provide context Rilo can’t see

Specify format when it matters

Tell Rilo what tools to use (or avoid)

Ask for clarification up front

What Rilo will do when a task is ambiguous