Agent overview

Agents are like intelligent assistants within Optimizely Opal. They use natural language instructions and tools to complete tasks on your behalf. Each agent has a specific purpose, whether that is generating content, analyzing data, or automating workflows.

Think of agents as skilled team members. Tools are what they use to take action. Instructions are the guidelines that tell them how and when to act. Agents combine both to deliver outcomes without requiring you to manage the technical details.

With agents, you can make simple requests like, "Draft a social post for our product launch" or "Summarize experiment results", and Opal selects the right tools and follow the right instructions to get it done.

For a visual walkthrough of agents, watch the video overview. 

Why agents matter

Agents are what make Opal powerful and flexible. Instead of having to know which tool to run or how to structure a request, you simply describe what you want in natural language. The agent does the rest, ensuring tasks are completed consistently and accurately.

Without agents, you would need to manually

• Configure tools for each task.
• Write detailed prompts every time you make a request.
• Understand the underlying systems or APIs.

With agents, you get repeatable, optimized workflows that you can customize to your organization's needs.

Types of agents

Agents in the Agent Directory

Agents in the Agent Directory are pre-built by Optimizely and come ready to use. These agents handle common tasks like reviewing content for tone and style, generating competitive insights, or providing customer support responses.

You can browse and add default agents from the Agent Directory. Each listing includes:

• Description – What the agent does and when to use it.
• Tools included – The built-in tools the agent can call.
• Configuration options – Settings you can adjust for your organization. 

Agents from the Agent Directory are the fastest way to get started because they are ready to run without custom development. 

See Agents in the Agent Directory for a list of available agents.

Specialized agents

Specialized agents are custom-built for your organization. They are designed to execute specific, well-defined tasks using your own tools, data, and instructions.

With specialized agents, you can

• Build tailored workflows for unique business processes.
• Control which tools the agent can access.
• Fine-tune inputs, outputs, and behavior using prompt templates.

Specialized agents are ideal when you need precise control or want to automate tasks that default agents do not cover.

See Create specialized agents for details on how to design and configure your own.

Workflow agents

Workflow agents are designed to process natural language input to accomplish complex workflows. They can automate and streamline multi-step processes within the Optimizely platform.

For example, a workflow agent named "Industry Marketer Workflow" could help coordinate marketing efforts, potentially by integrating with other specialized agents like a case study agent.

See Create a workflow agent for details on how to design and configure your work agent. 

Where agents are used

Agents work behind the scenes in several areas of Opal. Most collaborators experience agents through Opal Chat without needing to know which agents are active.

Opal Chat

In Opal Chat, you can talk to agents directly using natural language. Opal automatically selects the right default agent based on your request. If multiple agents could apply, Opal may ask clarifying questions to choose the best one.

Example requests include the following:

• Summarize the results of our last experiment – Uses a default results analysis agent.
• Create a product announcement post – Uses a default content generation agent.
• Check if there are any broken links on our website – Uses a specialized agent with a custom web-check tool.

See Opal prompts for more information.

Automated workflows

Some agents run automatically when certain conditions are met. For example,

• A specialized agent that tags uploaded files with metadata as soon as they are added to a repository.
• A default agent that generates draft help responses whenever a new support ticket is created.

Next steps

• Browse the Agent Directory to see available default agents.
• Create a specialized agent or Create a workflow agent.
• Manage specialized agents or Manage workflow agents to update the configuration of your agents.