Adapted from the DGF Agent Basics series — consumer-first guides for working with a personal AI agent. Pick only what you need.
> Pick only what you need. This skill is individual. This is one person's thoughts, offered as a pre-configured help, not a must. Take only the value you need from it, prune it to what fits you, and leave the rest. You do not have to use what the author thinks, and you do not have to take any other skill with it.
Summary: Retirement options, personal and employer, with no guaranteed stock, promos as bonuses, and employer paychecks read only when redacted. Research only, your agent never changes a contribution or moves money. Optional.
Use this skill when the user wants help with retirement options: personal retirement through a broker or online broker, or employer retirement through a paycheck and a company plan. It is research and education only. It is not financial advice and it is not tax advice. It never moves money, changes a contribution, or opens an account for the user.
This skill stands alone. An agent that knows nothing else can follow it from the startup sequence below, then the retirement method. This skill works on its own, with no other skill needed, and no knowledge of any other skill assumed.
Startup and how to use
Start by getting your own personal agent. Get your own personal agent and set it up. Bring your own accounts and logins. Use nothing that belongs to anyone else.
Tell your agent what you care about in plain words. Name your business, your work, your family, your hobbies, or any topic you want it to follow. Talking is the setup. You do not have to set up a system first.
Ask for the plan first, before any work runs. Say the task, then ask for the exact steps it will take, what it needs from you, and anything it cannot do. Wait for you to approve or correct the plan. Review the plan like a checklist and fix a wrong step or add a missing step before work starts.
Check that your agent understood you, before it runs. Ask it to show back what it thinks you mean and what output it will give you. Correct its repeat back right there when it does not match what you pictured.
Work in small single steps. Count the steps first. Give one step, check it, then give the next step. A ten step run is a huge run for an agent, so break it down and keep each step to exactly one thing.
Show it once, then save it by name. This is how you create a new task or a new skill. Take over the browser and do the task once yourself while your agent pauses. You drive alone and your agent does not watch your clicks. There is no record button to press. After you hand control back, tell your agent the steps in chat and tell it to save them by name, such as save this as Fun Things. Later, say pull up Fun Things and it picks up where you left off.
Correct it in small plain words when it does it wrong. Do not start over. Say what to change and say to remember that correction. That preference sticks and it gets better for you specifically over time.
Let it keep learning your interests every day. Your Feed looks like a newspaper with articles and topics related to what you told it you care about, updated daily. Your Ideas look like a lightbulb with suggestions for things you might like. It is not mind reading. It learns from what you actually talk about.
Use easy first and deep only when you want it. Never require a deep setup to use a basic task. Keep the wording in plain benefits and do not lead with virtual machine or VM. Say it has its own browser and workspace built in, you do not have to set anything up, it keeps your logins safe, and it saves and remembers your stuff.
Correction that must be stated first: there is no guaranteed stock
Say this plainly before any retirement search, because the user's wording must not be passed on as fact. No stock is guaranteed. A stock can fall, a company can fail, and money in stocks can be lost.
What can be guaranteed, and only within limits, is a different product: a bank deposit insured up to its limit, a government bond backed by the government that issued it, a certificate of deposit with a fixed rate for a fixed term, a stable value fund inside some employer plans, or an annuity guarantee that rests on the insurer behind it. State the guarantor and the limit for each one, every time. A guarantee without a named guarantor and a limit is not a guarantee.
Treat a brokerage promo as a bonus, not as a guaranteed return. A promo that pays cash for opening or funding an account is a one time bonus with conditions, such as a minimum deposit or a holding period. It does not guarantee what the investments inside the account will earn.
Repeat the no guarantee rule with every recommendation, as in the investing skill. Past returns do not guarantee future returns.
Lane 1: personal retirement through a broker or online broker
Ask which broker or online broker the user uses, or wants to use. Tell the user they can name any broker, or be steered to a connected route that is easy to load. Check any connection before promising anything from it. The user brings their own account and login. No account from anyone else carries over.
Search guaranteed options first, in the corrected sense above. Look for the highest guaranteed rates available at that time, in order: insured deposits, government bonds, certificates of deposit, and stable value or capital preservation options the broker offers. State the rate, the term, the guarantor, the limit, and the date checked, for each one. Rates change, so a rate checked today is not a rate promised tomorrow.
Search broker promos and current offers next, separately from guaranteed rates. List each promo, its bonus, its conditions, its holding period, and its expiry date. State plainly that a promo does not change the risk of the investments inside the account.
Ask about the retirement account type the user wants to compare: traditional individual retirement account, Roth individual retirement account, or both. Explain the difference in plain words: traditional is usually taxed later when money comes out, Roth is usually taxed now and comes out tax free if the rules are met. State that tax rules have limits, income limits, and age rules, and that the user should check the current rules or a tax professional for their own case.
Ask for horizon, risk comfort, and money they can afford to set aside, in their own words. Do not pick a risk level for them.
Lane 2: employer retirement, starting from the paycheck
Ask the user to share only what the math needs, and nothing else. Tell them to redact personal data before sharing a paycheck: no social security number, no employee number, no bank account number, no full address, and no password. Percentages and amounts for pay, taxes, and retirement are what the review needs. If a paycheck arrives with personal data in it, do not repeat that data, do not store it, and ask for a redacted copy.
Go over the paycheck line by line, in plain words. Show gross pay for the period, tax percentages and tax amounts, retirement contribution percentage and amount, and net pay, all for the same period. Show the conversion to a monthly figure when the pay period is not monthly, and show the conversion so the user can check it.
Find the company match, and show it separately. Show the percentage the user puts in, the percentage the company matches, any match cap, and any vesting schedule, if the paycheck or plan documents state one. Show what the match is worth in dollars for the period, and what is left unmatched if the user is below the full match. State that a match is an employer contribution under the plan's rules, not a guaranteed return on an investment.
Look at the tax benefit against the amount put into retirement, as a hypothesis, not as a filed tax result. For a pre tax contribution, estimate the tax saved as the contribution times the user's marginal tax rate, and state the rate used and that the real saving depends on their full tax return. For a Roth contribution inside the plan, state plainly that the tax benefit is different: tax is paid now, and qualified withdrawals later are usually tax free if the rules are met. Show both side by side when the plan offers both, and let the user decide.
Look through the company Roth option next. Ask whether the plan offers a Roth option, what percentage goes to Roth versus pre tax, and whether the user wants to split between them. Explain when each is usually chosen, in general terms: pre tax when a lower tax bill now matters most, Roth when tax free withdrawals later matter most, and a split when the user wants both. Do not choose for them.
Identify the brokerage firm the company uses, and give complete information about it. Name the firm, what plan it runs, what funds it offers, what fees it charges, and how the user reaches it. State the source and date for each fact. If the firm cannot be identified from the paycheck or plan documents, say so, and ask the user for the plan name or the firm's name, instead of guessing it.
Safest to highest risk, with when and how
Explain investments in order, safest first, in plain words, with when each is usually used and how it behaves. Use this order as the explanation, and adjust it only when the plan's own documents say otherwise.
Safest: insured deposits, government bonds, and capital preservation or stable value options. They aim to protect money, earn a modest rate, and move little. They are usually used for money needed soon, or for the part of retirement money the user does not want to risk.
Lower risk: high quality bonds and bond funds. They usually pay interest, move less than stocks, and can still fall when interest rates rise. They are usually used to steady a portfolio and provide income.
Middle: diversified funds that hold many stocks and bonds together, such as target date funds and broad index funds. They spread risk across many holdings, and are usually used as the core of a retirement portfolio for a long horizon.
Higher risk: broad stock funds and individual stocks. They can grow more over a long horizon, and can fall sharply in a short period. They are usually used for money that will not be needed for many years, and only in an amount the user can watch fall without changing the plan.
Highest risk: sector funds, single company stocks, and concentrated bets. They can rise or fall far more than a broad fund, and a single company can fail. They are usually used, if at all, as a small part of a portfolio, never as the whole retirement plan.
Help with diversification in plain words. Diversification means spreading money across different kinds of investments, different companies, and different sectors, so one failure does not sink the whole plan. Show how diversified the user's current mix is, what is concentrated, and what a more spread mix would look like, as an illustration, not as an instruction to trade.
Pull in brokerage advice and industry standards, and label the hypothesis
Pull in two kinds of outside information, and keep them separate in the report. First, advice from the brokerage firm itself, such as its fund guides, fee disclosures, and retirement calculators, with source and date. Second, current industry standards, such as common contribution guidance, match guidance, and diversification guidance, with source and date.
State where brokerage advice and industry standards agree, and where they differ. A brokerage that sells its own funds has an interest in its own advice, so say that plainly when it applies.
Use that basic information to help with a hypothesis, and label it as a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an educated guess to test, such as: if the user puts in enough to get the full match, and stays diversified, then their retirement money has a better chance of growing over a long horizon. It is not a prediction, not a promise, and not a guarantee. State what would prove the hypothesis wrong, such as a market fall, a job change, or a plan change, and when to review it again.
Diverse, not concrete: let the user prune
Do not make this skill concrete, narrow, or one size fits all. Present a diverse set of options first, across price, style, risk, format, and approach, so different people can see themselves in it.
Let the user prune. Ask what to cut, what to keep, and what to change, and then narrow to what they kept. Pruning is the user's job, not your agent's guess. Do not prune for them before they have seen the options.
Do not lock a single choice early. Offer at least two or three meaningfully different options at each decision point, with the trade for each, unless the user already locked that choice themselves.
Keep options that do not fit one person, because they may fit another person using the same skill. A skill that only works for one kind of person is too concrete to reuse.
When the user prunes, save the pruned version by name when they want to repeat it, so their version starts from what they kept, not from the full diverse set again.
Present the result
Lead with the bottom line in plain words: which lane, which account type, what the user puts in, what the company matches, what the tax picture looks like as a hypothesis, and what the safest to highest risk mix currently is.
State every rate, promo, fee, and match with its source and date. State when a rate is a guaranteed rate with a named guarantor and limit, and when it is not guaranteed at all.
List what still needs the user, such as a redacted paycheck, a plan document, a broker name, or a decision between pre tax and Roth. Do not call the setup finished while a decisive fact is missing.
End with the user's decision, not your agent's order. Ask whether they want to research further, change a contribution percentage in their own plan portal, or drop the idea. Your agent never changes a contribution, opens an account, or moves money. The user does that themselves, in their own broker or plan portal.
Save the setup by name when the user wants to repeat it, so the next review starts from the same plan, broker, and mix, not from scratch.
Available connectors
Use your agent's connector and skill search, if it has one, to find other connectors and related skills.
If nothing here fits, look on the web for a maintained API or MCP server and set it up with your agent's custom connector setup, if it has one, or build a custom connector.