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An agent is useful in proportion to how narrow you make it. These are the habits worth having.

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Give it a channel of its own

Make one channel, call it something like agent, and grant that. Nothing else. It keeps the agent’s output in one place, it makes the five-day clock do the tidying, and a channel that holds only agent output is a channel you can skim in a second. The alternative — granting a channel you already share with people — works, but everyone in that channel now sees agent items with the mark, and the agent sees their items too if you granted reading.

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Never point it at secrets

zas_send_file and zas_send_direct send any file the process can read. That includes ~/.ssh/id_rsa, a .env, a keychain export and a cloud credentials file.The tools’ own descriptions tell the model to confirm with you before sending secrets, keys or credentials. That is a prompt, not a wall. There is no server-side filter on what a file contains.
So: read the path before you approve a send. Treat “send me that file” from an agent the way you would treat it from a person you just met. If you need to move a credential between your own devices, do it yourself, and use a secret note so the body stays behind a cover until you open it.

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Leave reading off until you need it

Sending is the default for a reason. An agent that only sends can drop a build artefact or a screenshot into a channel and learn nothing about what else is there. Turn reading on when the agent actually has to pull something back — a design your colleague dropped in, a log from your phone — and turn it off again after. Note that receiving a Directo transfer counts as reading, because it writes a file onto the machine the agent runs on. An agent that only sends cannot be handed a file.

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Ask for a short life on throwaway output

Both sending tools take expires_in_days, and one day is the shortest. A build log, a test run or a screenshot of a fix is stale tomorrow, so there is no reason for it to sit in a channel for five days holding your storage. Say it in the request: “send that to the agent channel, for one day.”

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One profile per harness, named for the machine

Name the agent after the machine, not the tool: laptop, work-mac, desktop. You get five agents on the free plan, and when you look at the list in six months the machine is what you need to recognise. Keep Claude Code and Codex on separate --profile names. They then hold separate keys, and revoking one leaves the other working.

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Ask for a note when it is text

A stack trace, a diff, a migration plan and a command are all better as notes than as files. zas_send_note takes a language for highlighting, so a snippet arrives readable on your phone rather than as a .txt you have to open.

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Use Directo for the big things, and stay at the keyboard

An agent can be either end of a Directo transfer, and Directo is where a multi-gigabyte file belongs: nothing is stored and none of your space is used. It is a live handshake, so somebody has to press Receive on the other device within ten minutes. Start it when you are there, not before you walk away. If the connection fails in flight, a fallback tool can deliver the same file through an encrypted copy that lives up to 24 hours. That copy passes through storage, so it is your call, not the model’s. The tool asks.

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Check the strip now and then

Every channel with an agent shows a strip above its items naming each agent and its switches. It is there because forgetting who can write into a channel is the whole risk. Look at it when you open the channel.

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Revoke on the way out

Revoke the agent when you stop using that harness, when the machine changes hands, when a laptop is lost, or when you are done with a piece of work. Revoking is instant and it is free. Pairing again takes a minute. There is no reason to leave an agent standing.
Deleting the profile directory on disk is not revoking. The machine forgets the agent; the account side stays open. Do it from Settings → Agents → Revoke.

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What an agent is not for

  • Backup. Items leave after five days. Zas moves things; it does not keep them. Pin what has to survive, or put it somewhere built for storage.
  • A file server for a script. There is no API key and no bearer token by design. If you want a headless system to push files, an agent is the wrong shape.
  • Reaching a colleague’s channel. An agent touches channels your own account owns, and organization channels only where an administrator opened them. A channel you merely joined is out of reach.
  • Unattended large transfers. Directo needs a device on the other side within ten minutes. Nobody there means the offer expires having moved nothing.

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Where to go next

Channels and grants

The two switches, the numbers, and how to revoke.

Agents in an organization

What an admin can govern, and what they can see.

Text and code

Notes, snippets and the cover on a secret.

Expiry

The five-day clock, and how to pause it.