First things first: the puzzle only accepts one word per round — real life is looser. If your why in the Advisor conversation was different from ours and still held up, you were right.
The seven namings
| Situation | Word | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · The Monday order-email table, same way every time | Skill | Recurring + identical procedure = write it once, trigger it with /. |
| 2 · Lena: "I've told the chat three times — 30 days net" | Knowledge base | A fact you keep repeating belongs on a page: written once, known by every agent, forever. |
| 3 · The Bellevue clause needing a really careful read | Model | The task doesn't change, the brain does: hire the senior for this one read. |
| 4 · Opens the handbook, writes the reply itself | Agent | "Reads and produces" is doing, not advising — that's the coworker, not the chatbot. |
| 5 · Same Planner, other window, other buttons, stricter rules | Harness | A different workbench. The goal and the brief don't change. |
| 6 · Planner vs Advisor on the same brain | Agent | An agent is brain + job description + tools. Same model, different job — different colleague. |
| 7 · Zero budget, smarter tomorrow | Knowledge base | The one lever you can pull tonight, alone, for free. That is lesson 3. |
The two that fool people
- Round 1 → "Agent". The agent does the Monday table — but what makes it the same every week, even when someone covers for you, is the recipe card. Ask "who works?" → agent; "same way every time?" → skill.
- Round 6 → "Model". The instinct is that two different coworkers must be two different brains. They needn't be: the job description and the tools are what make the Planner a planner. That's why you can swap the model for a hard task (round 3) without getting a different coworker.
A round with the Advisor, as it should go
Advisor: Every time a new client books, you want the agent to check the Clients page, add the client if missing, and draft a welcome email — always the same way. Which word?
You: Skill — it's the same steps every time.
Advisor: Right, and the reason holds. One thing you didn't mention: the new client's details end up in the knowledge base — so this skill also feeds it. Next round…
What made that a good answer: the word and the shape of the work ("same steps every time"), not a description of the task ("because it's about clients"). If the Advisor had to ask "why?", your half-sentence was missing.
The pattern worth keeping
What separated the seven was never the topic (they're all about orders and clients) but the shape of the work — recurring vs. one-off, fact vs. task, routine vs. judgement, doing vs. advising. Name the shape first and the right word is obvious.
Back to lesson 1