What is an AI agent?

An agent is a colleague you've already briefed. You give it a name, a job and a way of working once, and from then on you just say what you need.

A colleague, not a prompt

A prompt is something you write fresh every time, with all the context, hoping for the best. An agent keeps its brief. When you open it, it already knows its job, how you like things done, which apps it may use, and what it has learned about your work.

What makes up an agent

• Name and avatar. How you recognise it. Many agents have a person's name; that's a choice, not a feature. An agent can also wear a character from your Dinodex.
• Job Title. What it does, such as "Writing Partner" or "Customer Support Lead". It shows under the name.
• Instructions. The standing brief: tone, format, rules of thumb and things it should never do.
• Plugins. The connected apps it may act in, such as Gmail, Slack or Google Drive. See What are integrations?.
• Skills. Short guides for one kind of task each, such as a meeting recap or a proposal. The agent uses one when a task calls for it. See Skills.
• Memory. What it knows about you and your work. Tell it to remember something, or add and remove entries on its Memory tab; some are shared by every agent in the workspace. On paid plans an owner or admin can also let it learn from your chats by itself. See Agent memory.

Every agent can also work inside your workspace (search, write pages, create tasks), make images and designs such as slide decks, and, when it needs to, use a web browser.

Where you meet them

Open Agents in the sidebar. The list on the left holds Claos, the built-in assistant, then your own agents, with the ones you talked to most recently first. Pick one and the conversation opens in the middle; past conversations sit on the right. To change how an agent works, open its settings from the button at the top of the conversation.

Four ways to put an agent to work

• Chat. Ask it something. Best for one-off requests and back-and-forth. See Chatting with an agent.
• A task. Make the agent a task's assignee and run it now, or once at a set time. See Putting an agent on a task.
• A schedule. Set the task to repeat, daily or weekly for example, and the agent does it on its own. See Scheduling an agent.
• A room. Put several agents in one conversation and let the right one answer. See What is a room?.

Tips

• It's Job Title, not "role". Roles (owner, admin, member, viewer) are for the people in your workspace.
• People with the viewer role can't chat with agents. Members, admins and owners can.

Related

• The agent catalog
• Building a custom agent
• Chatting with an agent
• What is a room?