About agents

An agent does a piece of your work for you: reading documents, filling your templates, checking one document against another, sending the result on. You describe the work once, and the agent carries it out every time something starts it.

Each time an agent works, that is a task. A task can start from a form response, a new Airtable record, a row in Google Sheets, an email to the agent's own address, a schedule, the API, or a message you type. The task keeps the whole conversation, every file the agent read or made, and its result.

What an agent is made of

• Role and behaviour: a short brief, the way you would brief a new teammate.
• Steps: the work, in order. A step is either done by AI, which reads the instructions and picks its tools, or fixed: one tool with the same settings every time.
• Tools: what the agent is allowed to use, such as Extract data, Generate document or Send email. An agent can only do what its tools let it do.
• Run when: what starts a task.
• Rules: preferences, formats and exceptions it has been taught, by you or by corrections people make in its tasks.
• Agent files: reference files it can read, such as a price list or a letter to fill in.
• Data fields: the result every task gives back, in the same fields each time. See Data fields.

Three kinds

Every agent is built the same way. What differs is how much of the work AI decides, and the Agents page labels each one:

• Agent (no label): AI does the steps. It uses them as a checklist rather than a script: it can do a step later when it needs something first, skip one that does not apply, or add one when the conversation asks for it.
• Hybrid: AI does most steps, and some are fixed. A fixed step always runs, exactly as set, wherever the work needs it.
• Automation: AI is off. Only fixed steps run, in order, and no AI model is ever called, so a task costs only what its tools cost. A finished automation task is closed: to do it again, run it again.

Use an automation when the work is the same every time, such as "when a form is submitted, make the PDF and email it". Use an agent or a hybrid when the work needs judgement, such as reading documents that differ, or deciding what to do about a mismatch.

Built-in agents

Every team has three agents from the start:

• Assistant: the agent you talk to when you start a task without choosing one. It has no steps; it works out what to do from your message, using its tools.
• Template designer: creates and edits templates with you.
• Form builder: creates and edits forms with you.

Automette keeps improving its built-in agents. You can still change one: your changes stay on top of those improvements, and Remove my changes in its Settings takes them away.

Drafts, versions and On/Off

Changes to an agent save as you make them, into a draft. Tasks run the agent's active version, so a change reaches real work only when you click Save version. To try a change first, open Run a task and turn on Run the draft. The label at the top of the page, such as Draft · on v3, opens the version history, where you can go back to an earlier version.

A new agent gets its first version as soon as it is created. The On switch in the agent's Settings stops it starting new tasks without deleting it.

What it costs

A task costs what its tools cost: 0.01 credits for each document it makes, 0.001 credits for each email, webhook, update to another app or web page read, 0.005 credits for each page read from a scan or photo, and three times what the AI model cost for the AI it uses. Each agent has a spending limit per task, 10 credits unless you change it in Settings. See How credits are used.

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