I have often written about how utterly overwhelmed most web managers are. They're not 'managing', they're coping.

Happily, solutions to many issues are shared by peers around the world. It really helps.

I have now built The Website Manager's Agent and The Website Manager's Notebook - AI assistants for website managers.

These AIs are based on the hundreds-of-thousands of words from books, blog posts, online articles, presentations and more, that I have written about web management over the last 20 years.

The aim is to lighten the load.

My hope is that they can help web folk to solve the many recurring challenges of digital management and governance. This ranges from web team roles and responsibilities to governance processes and procedures. From content and design decisions to digital strategy. And much more - including the impact of AI itself.

They're the services I wish I'd had when I started out.

Hundreds of thousands of words

I built these AIs using custom GPT from OpenAI and NotebookLM from Google. They have been inspired in part by (the much more sophisticated) AskLuke created by Luke Wroblewski.

For the knowledge repositories, I added a copy of pretty much everything I have written on the topics of website management, governance, content design, UX, etc, over the last two decades. A full list is below.

Inevitably, these agents have all the same issues as other Generative AI tools, including hallucinations. I am continuing to refine theur responses by adding further instructions and clarifications in the backend.

That said, my testing so far indicates that the models interpret the source material quite well. By-and-large, they are delivering useful answers.

(Unlike AskLuke, I have not configured my custom GPT to reply as if in my own voice. Maybe I'll try that in future?)

Ongoing, I will continue to tweak the models and refine the sources. This includes adding Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to incorporate ongoing updates to my website.

I would genuinely like to know how these work for you, so feel free to email me any feedback.

To help it do better, you can also thumbs-up or thumbs-down the responses they generate.

Source material used in The Website Manager's Agent and Notebook

• Publication: Web Management and Governance Masterclass (ref: diffily.com/masterclass)
• Publication: The Website Managers Handbook (ref: diffily.com/book)
• Online articles: Numerous articles from my website about web management and governance (diffily.com/articles)
• Blog posts: The most relevant posts about web management and governance from my blog (ref: blog.diffily.com)
• Article: Why digital government in Ireland is failing and how to fix it (from Medium.com)
• Article: How to plan manpower on a web team (ref: AListApart.com/author/shanediffily/)
• Article: How to Educate Your Website Stakeholders (ref: AListApart.com/author/shanediffily/)
• Article: The 8 basic forms of digital Content Design (ref: blog.diffily.com)
• Article: The 'O3 model' for planning a web team's digital capacity (ref: blog.diffily.com)
• Article: Agentic AI spells the end of traditional websites. This is how Content Designers need to react. (ref: diffily.com)
• Artefact: New Framework of Web Governance (ref: diffily.com/governance)
• Artefact: Self assessment questions to gauge your understanding of web governance (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: A sample set of digital standards for a website (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How to healthcheck governance quality on your website (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: A template approach for website management and governance (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: A description of common web team roles and responsibilities (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How to build a web governance roadmap (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How to audit your web governance (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How to craft a digital strategy (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Artefact: How improve quality for basic aspects of web delivery (ref: diffily.com/downloads)
• Presentation: Better web content for better government (ref: diffily.com/speaking)
• Presentation: AI is going to eat your website for lunch - but you can set the menu (ref: workingincontent.com)