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A phone agent shines at the small, recurring errands that live across several apps: what’s on the calendar, what’s unread, what needs attention. One prompt, one consolidated answer.

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The morning catch-up

This is a multi-app errand in a single phone_run_task; the assistant monitors until the summary comes back. Two design choices make it reliable:
  • A read-only guardrail - “don’t reply to anything” scopes the agent to observation.
  • Bounded asks - “first three events”, “unread from this morning” - keep the task short and the answer focused.

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Recurring errand patterns

Inbox triage:
Calendar guard:
Status checks:
Device basics - battery, network, locale, current app - are available without running a task at all: phone_get_state returns them instantly, read-only, permission-free.

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Keeping it fast

  • One errand per task beats one mega-task. Chain follow-ups in the same session - each task stays inside its timeout and returns something usable even if a later step fails. See Performance.
  • The default per_call_timeout_s of 300 seconds is comfortable for catch-ups; raise it only for genuinely long flows.
  • If the phone is busy (an in-app task holds the execution lane), your task waits in pending up to queue_wait_timeout_s - increase it if mornings are contended, or check phone_device_status first.

Cross-app workflows

When the errand needs several tasks and a session

Task design

Guardrails and bounded asks