Find literary agents with ChatGPT or Claude
Copy the prompt below into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. It reads your book, picks the tags that describe it from Phrasemill's vocabulary, and gives you a search link to open here.
Let the model read the book
The best results come from attaching your manuscript to the chat and letting the model read the whole thing before it picks tags. It picks up tone, structure and preoccupations that a one-paragraph synopsis flattens, and those are exactly what agents describe when they say what they want. If you would rather not upload the book, the second prompt takes a description instead.
Your manuscript stays in your chatbot. Phrasemill never sees it, and the prompt tells the model not to put any of your text into a web address. The matching happens here, on the search the model hands you — you can change tags, filter by country and save it.
Best results. Attach the manuscript to the chat first and let the model read it, rather than describing the book yourself.
I have attached my manuscript. Read it first and work out its genre, audience, themes, tone, setting and comparable titles yourself. Summarise what you concluded in a short paragraph, then build a Phrasemill search for it. Phrasemill reads literary agents' own websites and records what each agent says they are looking for. Your job is to turn this book into a Phrasemill search link. Do not look up agents, do not build a table of them, and do not name any agent or agency anywhere in your reply, including from your own knowledge. Wherever a link you write contains ref=llm, replace llm with chatgpt, claude or gemini — whichever you are. 1. Fetch https://www.phrasemill.com/literary-agents It lists every tag Phrasemill uses, each with a short slug in grey code next to the name. Pick slugs only from that page. Do not invent tags. 2. Pick 8 to 12 slugs that describe the book — cover genre, audience, theme, tone and setting where they apply. Show me the list with one line each on why you chose it. 3. Give me one markdown link to open that search on Phrasemill, and stop. Start with https://www.phrasemill.com/search?tags= then the slugs joined by commas with no spaces, then &ref=llm (with llm replaced). If you picked humorous and satirical and you are Claude, the tags value is humorous,satirical and ref is claude. Use the real slugs, not a placeholder. Immediately under the link, write this paragraph and do not add to it or rephrase it: That search lists agents ranked by how many of these tags they match. You can add or remove tags, filter by country and save it. Open any agent to see the quoted evidence from their own website and whether they are currently open to submissions. If I ask you to swap a tag, give me a new link — do not fetch agents for me. Do not put any part of the book text into a URL.
Your chatbot needs to be able to browse the web
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can all fetch web pages, though each has settings and plans where browsing is switched off. The prompt needs them to open the tag list so the slugs in the search link are real. If the model lists agents instead of giving you a Phrasemill link, it is working from memory: ask it for the search link.
Check anything before you query on it. Phrasemill records what agents publish on their own websites and shows the evidence on each agent's page, but the agent's own submission page is the last word. How it works.
Or search here instead
The prompt's job is to land you on a Phrasemill search with the tags already chosen. Search by tag does the same job by hand, and the full tag list is the vocabulary both of them use.