Agentic Authoring

Using our authoring agent is an effective way to create, debug, optimize your agentic workflows. This is a continuation of the Create Agentic Workflows page.

Configuring Your Repository

In order to enable the agentic authoring experience, you will need to configure your repository with a few files. Run this prompt or the init command.

Initialize this repository for GitHub Agentic Workflows using https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/gh-aw/main/install.md

or

gh aw init

Make sure to commit and push the files to your repository.

Using the GitHub Web Interface

If you have access to GitHub Copilot, you can create and edit Agentic Workflows directly from the Web Interface. This technique is slow and non-interactive but it is incredibly useful to turn an idea to reality in a couple minutes. For a more fine grained, interactive experience we recommend using a coding agent (see next section).

Create an agentic workflow from the GitHub web interface

Tip

On the first run in a new repository, the workflow will surely fail because the secrets are not configured. The agentic workflow should detect the missing tokens and create an issue with instructions on how to configure them.

Remixing Workflows Between Repositories

When you need to adapt an existing workflow from another repository, use the create-agentic-agent to perform AI-assisted migration. The agent analyzes the source workflow, identifies dependencies, adapts configuration for your repository, and validates the result. This is useful for forking workflows as starting points or one-time migrations requiring substantial changes. For synchronized updates across repositories, use Reusing Workflows with gh aw add instead.

Example prompt for migration:

Migrate the release.md workflow from github/gh-aw to this repository.
Adapt permissions and repository-specific references for our structure.

Advanced Techniques

Planner

If you prefer to use an AI chatbot to author agentic workflow, you can use the agentic-chat instructions with any conversational AI application to create clear, actionable task descriptions. Use the button below to copy the full instructions: Copy agentic-chat instructions .

The agentic-chat assistant helps you:

• Break down complex problems into clear, actionable phases
• Structure task descriptions for AI coding agents
• Write specifications without implementation details
• Follow best practices for agentic workflow task descriptions

To use the agentic-chat instructions:

1. Copy the full instructions using the button above
2. Paste them into your AI chat interface
3. Describe your workflow goal or problem
4. The assistant will ask clarifying questions and generate a structured task description
5. Copy the generated task description (wrapped in 5 backticks) and use it in your workflow

The assistant uses a neutral, technical tone and focuses on what needs to be done rather than how to implement it, making it ideal for creating specifications that AI coding agents can execute.

Dictation

When creating agentic workflows using speech-to-text (dictation), you may encounter terminology mismatches and formatting issues common to voice recognition systems. To help correct these issues, use the dictation instructions prompt or Copy full instructions .

This prompt helps rephrase text captured through speech-to-text recognition by:

• Correcting project-specific terminology (e.g., “ghaw” → “gh-aw”, “work flow” → “workflow”)
• Transforming casual dictated sentences into clear, imperative task descriptions
• Removing filler words and improving technical tone
• Adding necessary context that might be implicit in spoken requests

Load the dictation prompt into your AI assistant before or after dictating your workflow instructions to improve accuracy and clarity.