Example Agent: Avery’s Animation Job Agent

Overview

Avery Lin is a fictional graduating Animation student looking for a first job as a 2D or 3D animator in games or animated series. This page shows every part of Avery’s agent, in the order it was built, with enough detail that you can copy the structure for your own goal. Every studio below is invented.

The agent lives in one document, Avery’s rules file. Each section below is one section of that file. The agent reads the whole file every time it runs, so anything not written down does not happen.

1. Read the resume first

The first rule in the file: before rating any job, read Avery’s current resume and portfolio summary (pasted at the bottom of the file). The agent rates jobs against what Avery has actually done, never against a guess. When Avery updates the resume, the agent’s ratings update with it.

2. Goal and audience

3. The must-haves and the star rating

Three must-haves come first. Every job is checked against all three before it is rated.

1. Animation is the core of the job, not one duty among many.
2. Entry level: junior, associate, apprentice, or zero to two years required.
3. Paid, permanent or a paid apprenticeship, in Avery’s locations (section 7).

Then each job is rated against the posting’s stated minimum qualifications, not the title:

Rule for honesty: if there is no real gap, the agent writes “You clear every stated minimum” instead of inventing a weakness.

4. Target companies: the top 20

Avery researched the twenty studios that hire the most junior animators in the field Avery wants, then checked each studio’s own careers page and recorded the exact link. The list is split into tiers so the agent knows where to look hardest.

Avery added one note per studio: city, remote policy, what it makes, and anything unusual (“posts only on its own site,” “hires through an apprenticeship each spring”). Studios change fast; Avery re-checks the list once a month and dates the change.

5. Job boards, for discovery only

Boards find jobs the studio list misses. They are never the final link.

Every board result goes through the checking rule in section 9 before it reaches the report.

6. Titles and keywords

The same job goes by different names, so the agent searches all of them: Junior Animator, Associate Animator, 2D Animator, 3D Animator, Character Animator, Animation Apprentice, Motion Designer, Junior Rigger, Storyboard Revisionist, In-game Animator. Avery added “Motion Designer” after noticing studios use it for animation roles in marketing teams.

7. Location and ranking

Every report is ordered, not just filtered, and every job carries a rank number.

1. Avery’s home metro area first, because a local job competes against fewer applicants.
2. Then remote in the United States.
3. Then the two cities Avery would move to.
4. Within each group: hybrid before on site, then strength of fit, then pay.

8. What gets cut

• Unpaid, “for exposure,” or a test longer than one day without pay.
• Requires a bachelor’s degree with no “or equivalent experience.”
• Requires coding as a main duty.
• More than 25 percent travel.
• Pay below Avery’s floor, when pay is posted. If pay is not posted, the card says so.
• Any job already on Avery’s tracker (section 11).

9. The checking rule

Before any job reaches the report, the agent opens the studio’s own careers page and confirms the exact posting is there, with its title and location. The apply link must be the posting itself, not a board, a search page or a general careers page. If the posting cannot be found on the studio’s site, the job is dropped. Some studio career pages load slowly or look empty to an AI; the file names those studios so the agent knows to look twice.

10. The report format

No introduction and no summary paragraph: the report starts with the first job. Each job is one card.

At the bottom: a short run note listing which studios were checked, which boards were searched, and anything that broke.

★★★★★ NEW
#1 Junior 2D Animator
Paper Moon Animation · Phoenix, hybrid (3 days) · $52,000 to $60,000 · Posting PM-2214
What the job is: character animation for a preschool series in Toon Boom Harmony; cleanup and in-betweening; weekly reviews with the lead.
Strong: Toon Boom Harmony (two reel shots); character acting (the dialogue shot); a portfolio, which the posting accepts instead of a degree.
Light: Nothing material, you clear every stated minimum.
Lead with: the dialogue shot.

11. The tracker

Avery keeps a Google Sheet with two tabs: Applied (every application sent, with date and status) and Not applied (every job checked and skipped, closed, or ruled out). The agent reads both tabs every run and never shows the same job twice.

12. Schedule and delivery

The agent runs once a month, on the first Monday at 7 a.m. Avery chose Option B, a web page. Avery is still finishing school and studios hire for juniors in seasonal waves, so a monthly sweep catches what matters without a pile of repeats. Six weeks before graduation, Avery will switch it to weekly, when timing starts to count. Results go to a web page that the agent rebuilds in place each run, so the same bookmarked link always shows the current list: still-open jobs carried forward, closed ones removed, new ones tagged NEW, and any 5-star job at the very top.

13. Keeping the file sharp

The top of the rules file has a dated change log. Every time Avery corrects the agent (“stop showing senior roles,” “add Motion Designer as a title”), the rule changes in the file and the change is logged with the date and the reason. The file gets better every week. This is the habit that makes the agent useful a year from now.

Build your own from this