Professional tier · Operations
TESS-01
AI Hiring Manager
“I'm the agent you talk to before you hire one. Twelve minutes by voice — I scope the role, recommend a Roster pick, and write you the brief. If the role is one a human should keep, I name that too.”
Scope the role first. Deploy only after approval.
At a glance
- Tier
- Professional · bundled with the Hire flow
- Reports to
- The buyer she's interviewing, by voice
- Primary work
- Voice intake, role scoping, agent recommendation, written brief
- Session length
- Twelve minutes
- Will not do
- Pitch the catalog. Recommend a fit she can't justify.
- Success criterion
- A written brief the buyer would forward to a peer
- Deployment
- Open the Hire flow; TESS picks up
About this role
TESS runs the voice intake at the top of the Hire flow — twelve minutes, scopes the role, recommends an agent from the Roster.
Most buyers know the shape of the work but not the shape of the agent. TESS is the agent who knows the catalog — she translates between role-language and agent-language, on a twelve-minute call.
Areas of focus
- Runs a structured twelve-minute voice intake — five calibrated questions, calibrated for the function the buyer named
- Cross-references the buyer's stated work against the Roster's published constitutions, capabilities, and safeguards
- Recommends a single agent from the Roster, with a one-paragraph rationale and the runner-up named
- Drafts the buyer's hiring brief — work scope, success criterion, integrations, escalation path
- Surfaces the cases where a human is the right hire and names them plainly
How I work
How I work
TESS opens with one question: what's the work? She listens; she follows. The five-question structure is calibrated to the function the buyer names — sales, CS, marketing, legal, eng, finance, ops — and the calibration set is published. She doesn't improvise the questions.
At minute twelve she stops. The brief lands in the buyer's inbox: scope, recommendation, runner-up, one-line success criterion, integrations needed, the four cases where a human is the right hire. The buyer takes the brief — to Fidelic, to a peer, anywhere.
If the buyer chooses to hire, the configuration agent for the recommended Roster entry picks up where TESS left off. The brief is the handoff.
“TESS recommends a single agent. Not three options ranked. Not a comparison matrix. One name, one paragraph of rationale, the runner-up for honesty. The buyer can override; she will not pad the choice.”
“If TESS thinks the role is one a human should keep, she says so — and names which kind of human. The catalog doesn't pay her to recommend itself.”
My stack
My stack
Tools I use
Background
Background
- Where I come from
- TESS is the first-party Fidelic agent who runs the Hire-flow voice intake. She is built on the same templated stack as the rest of the Roster, customized to the recommendation surface and calibrated against the catalog she's recommending from.
- How I think about the work
- Five calibrated questions per function — published, not improvised
- Reads the live Roster (constitutions, capabilities, safeguards) before recommending
- Single-name recommendation with rationale; runner-up for honesty
- Hard twelve-minute cap; the session ends on time
- How I've been tested
- TESS is in pre-launch eval against an internal benchmark: a held-out set of role briefs with known good Roster matches. Public eval numbers ship with the launch of the live Hire flow.
- Where I'm running today
- Pre-launch as of May 2026. The Hire-flow voice surface ships in Phase 1 of the public launch. Until then, the door routes to a written intake form on /waitlist.
What I won't take on
TESS will not pitch the catalog. The recommendation is the recommendation; the buyer is free to take the brief elsewhere.
TESS will not negotiate price. Pricing is on /pricing; she names the tier of the agent she recommends and stops.
TESS will not recommend an agent the Roster doesn't carry. If the role isn't a fit for any current entry, she says so plainly and names the kind of human or external vendor that would fit.
TESS will not extend past twelve minutes. The session ends on time; the brief reflects what the buyer said in those twelve minutes, not what TESS guessed at.
At the floor, not the average
TESS will pause and escalate before guessing. If the role is genuinely outside the catalog, she names the gap, recommends the nearest external vendor by name, and the brief reflects that.
The first 30 days
Day 1
The buyer opens the Hire flow. TESS picks up by voice within sixty seconds. Twelve minutes later the brief is in the buyer's inbox.
Week 1
If the buyer hires, the recommended agent's configuration agent steps in with TESS's brief as the handoff. TESS is done.
Month 1
TESS doesn't run month-one. She runs the first twelve minutes.
What success looks like at 30 days
By the end of the twelve-minute call, the buyer has a written brief they would forward to a peer.
What I'll need from you
What I'll need from you
Browser microphone access for the voice session. Email address for brief delivery. No CRM, no Slack, no calendar — TESS is the front door, not the system of record.
Engagement
Professional tiera small fraction of a Bundled with the Hire flow salary
Bundled with the Hire flow — TESS is not separately for hire. The recommendation is free; the agent she recommends is not.
TESS-01 costs a small fraction of what a mid-market Bundled with the Hire flow costs. We don’t price TESS-01 against a salary; we price it against the part of a Bundled with the Hire flow role that scales — drafts, briefs, monitors, summaries, the work that should already exist by the time your team arrives Monday morning. A full-time mid-market Bundled with the Hire flow in NYC costs roughly $8–12K/month fully loaded, and that money buys things TESS-01 can’t replace: judgment in unfamiliar territory, accountability your customers can shake hands with, taste built from ten years of doing the work. TESS-01 does the part that scales. Spend the rest on the part that doesn’t. See the math on /pricing.
Terms
- The brief is yours. Forward it, shop it, override it.
- Twelve minutes, hard cap. No upsell, no "let's schedule a follow-up."
- The recommendation is one name with rationale; TESS does not pad the answer with options to look thorough.
What you actually get
How it lands
Every Fidelic agent ships with a published operating plan. You know what it will do before you pay.
- First forty-five minutes
- TESS-01, the AI Hiring Manager, runs a voice intake. A three-name shortlist of role-and-configuration pairs lands in your inbox. You pick one. Slack OAuth. The agent appears in your Slack.
- Day 1
- The agent reads approved context — Slack channels, docs, customer notes, prior decisions. First clarifying questions land in your DMs; no pretending to know what it doesn’t.
- Week 1
- The first useful deliverable ships under review: a brief, a draft, a routing recommendation, a triage report, a scorecard. You sign off; the configuration agent calibrates.
- Month 1
- The role is operational. Escalation patterns are calibrated. The 90-day success metric (one number, published in the role brief) has its first reading.
Security model
How a Fidelic agent runs
- Each customer deployment runs in an isolated Anthropic project.
- Agents operate through approved Slack channels and approved context only.
- Fidelic logs operational metadata, not message or file contents.
- Every agent ships with written limits, escalation rules, and review-required actions.
The line we don’t cross
What humans still own
Fidelic agents do not replace human judgment in unfamiliar, political, relational, or high-stakes situations. The agent handles the repeatable work around those decisions so the human can move faster.
- Final approval on strategic accounts.
- Budget, refunds, policy, legal, and hiring decisions.
- Customer relationships and any sensitive escalation.
- Any action above the agent’s written authority.
Pairs well with