What are AI Agents?
AI Agents are custom AI workers you build once and set loose — they run on a schedule or a trigger and do real work across your connected tools.
Last updated July 14, 2026
An Agent is a custom AI worker you build once and then let run on its own. Where the Assistant responds to you in a live chat, an Agent is set up ahead of time with its own job, its own tools, and its own instructions — then it works in the background, on a schedule or in response to an event, and delivers results without you sitting there.
Think of an Agent as a teammate you brief once. You describe the job, connect the tools it needs, and it handles that job every time from then on.
Assistant vs. Agent
Both are powered by the same AI and can take real action across your connected tools. The difference is how they run.
| Assistant | Agent |
|---|---|
| You chat live and it responds now | Runs on its own, on a schedule or trigger |
| General-purpose, ad hoc | Purpose-built for one repeating job |
| You steer every step | Follows the instructions you set once |
What an Agent is made of
Every Agent is assembled from a few building blocks. You configure these in the AI builder or on the agent's tabs:
- Tools — the connected apps and abilities it can use (email, calendar, CRM, web research, and more).
- Skills — reusable playbooks that tell it how to do a task step by step.
- Files & Knowledge — reference material it reads from.
- Memory & Secrets — what it remembers between runs and the credentials it needs.
- Channels — where it can reach you.
- Automations — the Schedules and Triggers that start a run.
How an Agent runs
An Agent starts a run when its schedule fires or a trigger event arrives — a new email, a webhook, or an event from a connected integration. It does the work, and the output lands in Deliveries. You can review every run in Activity, and anything that went wrong shows up in Errors.
What you can build
Agents shine at repeating work: monitoring a topic and emailing you a digest, drafting and sending reports, triaging inbound messages, keeping a CRM tidy, researching leads, or answering the phone as an IVR agent. If it's a job you'd hand to an assistant, you can likely build an Agent for it.