Modify software programs to improve performance
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Producing the draft is the single thing current models are best at, and it needs no integration at all: a prompt and a couple of reference documents are enough. A person still edits it and takes responsibility for what goes out.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Drafting and content production |
| Jobs that do it | 10 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Generalist agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Thinking Creatively (4.A.2.b.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 10 occupations that perform it.
- Expand or modify system to serve new purposes or improve work flow.
- Modify and customize commercial programs for internal needs.
- Participate in network technology upgrade or expansion projects, including installation of hardware and software and integration testing.
- Test programs or databases, correct errors, and make necessary modifications.
- Write new programs or modify existing programs to meet customer requirements, using current programming languages and technologies.
- Write, update, and maintain computer programs or software packages to handle specific jobs such as tracking inventory, storing or retrieving data, or controlling other equipment.
- Design, develop and modify software systems, using scientific analysis and mathematical models to predict and measure outcomes and consequences of design.
- Modify existing software to correct errors, allow it to adapt to new hardware, or to improve its performance.
- Back up or modify applications and related data to provide for disaster recovery.
- Assess the usefulness of pre-developed application packages and adapt them to a user environment.
- Perform or direct revision, repair, or expansion of existing programs to increase operating efficiency or adapt to new requirements.
- Modify existing software to correct errors, adapt it to new hardware, or upgrade interfaces and improve performance.
- Write, analyze, review, and rewrite programs, using workflow chart and diagram, and applying knowledge of computer capabilities, subject matter, and symbolic logic.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for drafting and content production, and what it costs.
Drafting needs no tools, no integration and no platform. One $20 assistant and two reference documents beat any agent builder here, and every extra thing in this stack is cost with nothing behind it.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Generalist agents
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
Step-by-step workflows that name this activity, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Others for drafting and content production
Who does this work
10 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Design computer or information systems or applications”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.