The AI in Describe turns a sentence into a recipe. It builds what you say, so a vague request gets a vague recipe. When it truly cannot tell which thing you meant, it asks. For everything else, the wording is yours.
The trick is to picture yourself doing the task by hand, then write down each thing you would do, in order, as if you were giving directions to a friend who has never seen the app.
Quote the words you see on the screen
The AI finds buttons by reading the text on your screen, so give it the exact wording, in quotes. Not “press the start thing” but: tap “Compose”. Not “go to my stuff” but: tap “My lists”.
You do not need the whole label. A short, clearly readable piece of it is enough.
Buttons with no words: describe them
An icon has nothing to read, so say what it looks like and where it is: “tap the X in the top right, it has no text”, or “tap the camera switch icon next to the shutter”. The AI finds it by its look and saves a picture of it for later runs.
If a later run cannot find that picture, open the run in History and use Teach the fix: show the right spot once and the recipe is patched.
Say when something only appears sometimes
Notices, tips and rating popups do not show up every time. If you write “close the notice” without saying so, the recipe fails on every run where there is no notice.
Phrases like “if you see”, “sometimes” and “may appear” fix this. So instead of “close the notice”, write: “if a notice shows up, close it”.
One sentence, one job
The most common mistake is putting a loop and a fallback into one sentence:
“if you see the popup, close it, otherwise tap Compose, and keep checking until it’s gone”
That asks for two things at once, and the recipe will misbehave. Finish the popup part first, then say what comes next:
“Keep tapping the X while the popup is showing. Once it is gone, or if it was never there, tap ‘Compose’.”
Things that fade in are “optional”, not “if you see it”
“If you see it” checks one single moment. A button that fades in, or a banner that slides down late, may not be there at exactly that moment, so the step gets skipped and things break later.
Write it like this instead: “tap ‘Continue’, it may take a moment to appear, this step is optional”. The recipe then keeps trying for a while before it moves on.
Put a number on slow loading
Some screens take their time. If you do not say so, the AI assumes things appear quickly and the recipe may give up too soon. If you have seen a screen load slowly, write it in: “wait for ‘Inbox’, it can take up to 30 seconds”.
Phrases that always work
- “optional”: the step does not fail the run if it does not happen
- “if you see X, do Y”: Y only happens when X is on the screen
- “if it never shows, move on”: wait a bit, then continue anyway
- “tap it 20 times”, “double tap”: one step does the whole burst
- Ending with “done” or “that’s it” simply ends the task
Watch the first run
Once the recipe is built, run it once while you watch. If it fails because a popup was not there, a “sometimes” step was not marked as such. Select the recipe’s card in the chat and say so: “the notice is optional”. If a step cannot find its target, the screenshot in History shows what the screen really looked like at that moment.
Putting it all together
A complete request looks like this:
“Open the mail app and wait for ‘Inbox’, it can take up to 30 seconds. A notice may show up, possibly more than once. Keep tapping the X (top right, no text) while it is showing. Once it is gone, or if it never appeared, tap ‘Compose’. Type [email protected] into To, ‘weekly report’ into Subject, and ‘Everything is on track for Friday.’ into the message. Done.”
It quotes the words on the screen, treats the notice as optional and loops only the closing, gives “tap Compose” its own sentence, describes the X, puts a number on the slow load, and ends the task plainly. It also stops before Send: you press that yourself.