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Assistants

Assistants are persistent background agents that monitor events, respond to triggers, and complete tasks without manual prompting. They run autonomously in the background, handling repetitive work like drafting customer emails, triaging support tickets, or answering Slack questions.

Creating an Assistant

  1. Click Assistants in the sidebar
  2. Click New Assistant
  3. Fill in the assistant details:
    • Name: A descriptive name (e.g., "Customer Reply Drafter")
    • Description: What the assistant does
    • System prompt: The instructions that define the assistant's behavior
    • Model: Which AI model to use
    • Trigger type: How the assistant is activated
    • Tools: Which MCP connectors the assistant can access
  4. Click Create

Trigger Types

Assistants support multiple trigger types that determine when they activate:

Trigger Description Use Case
Manual Activated by clicking "Run" in the UI On-demand tasks like generating a report
Webhook Activated by an incoming HTTP POST request Responding to external events (CI/CD, form submissions)
Slack Activated by messages in a Slack channel Answering team questions, triaging requests

Tip: Webhook-triggered assistants receive the full HTTP request body as context, so they can process structured data from third-party services.

System Prompts

The system prompt defines the assistant's personality, capabilities, and constraints. Write clear, specific instructions that tell the assistant exactly what to do and how to respond.

Example system prompt for a support ticket triager:

You are a support ticket triager for a SaaS company. When a new ticket arrives:

1. Categorize it: bug, feature request, question, or billing
2. Assess priority: P1 (critical), P2 (high), P3 (medium), P4 (low)
3. Suggest the appropriate team: engineering, product, support, or finance
4. Draft a brief initial response acknowledging the ticket

Be professional and empathetic. Never promise specific timelines.

Tool Selection

Each assistant can be granted access to specific MCP connectors. For example, a support assistant might need:

  • Slack — to read and respond to messages
  • Linear — to create and update tickets
  • PostgreSQL — to look up customer data

Only grant the tools an assistant actually needs. This follows the principle of least privilege and keeps your data secure.

Status Management

Assistants have three possible states:

  • Active: The assistant is running and will respond to triggers
  • Paused: The assistant is temporarily disabled. Triggers are ignored until it's resumed
  • Error: The assistant encountered a problem. Check the error details and fix the configuration

You can pause and resume assistants at any time from the sidebar or the assistant detail view.

Editing an Assistant

Click an assistant in the sidebar to open its detail view. From there you can:

  • Edit the name, description, and system prompt
  • Change the trigger type
  • Update tool access
  • Switch the model
  • Pause or resume the assistant

Deleting an Assistant

To delete an assistant:

  1. Open the assistant detail view
  2. Click the Delete button
  3. Confirm the deletion in the dialog

Warning: Deleting an assistant is permanent. All configuration and history for that assistant will be removed. Consider pausing instead if you might need it later.

Next Steps