How Cobalt works

The mental model behind Cobalt — agents, tools, channels, and identity.

How Cobalt works

A few concepts explain almost everything in Cobalt. Once they click, the rest of the console is easy to navigate.

An agent is an identity plus its tools

An Agent is the thing your employees talk to. It has an identity — a name, a role, a personality, and safety boundaries — and it has a set of tools it can use to answer questions and get things done.

Everything you configure for an agent is, ultimately, about its tools: which ones it has, and how they’re allowed to behave.

Capabilities are tools, granted three ways

You give an agent capabilities by giving it tools. There’s a clear order of preference:

1. Integrations — the primary way. An Integration connects the agent to an external system (your service desk, HRIS, identity provider, file store, and so on) and turns that system’s capabilities into tools the agent can call. Reach for an integration first.

2. Skillsets — for what an integration can’t do. When no integration covers what you need — a bespoke internal API, an unusual workflow — you author a Skillset: a small set of natural-language Skills that tell the agent how to do the job, with credentials supplied by a Connection. Skillsets are the exception path, not the default.

3. Custom knowledge — for one-offs. For reference material that doesn’t live in a connected system — a policy PDF, an internal FAQ — add custom knowledge the agent can search and cite.

Rule of thumb: Integration → Skillset → Custom knowledge. If a connected system can do it, use the integration. Only drop down a level when the level above genuinely can’t.

Rules and hooks control how tools behave

Once an agent has tools, you control how they’re allowed to act with a layered set of guardrails — see tools, rules & hooks:

• Family rules apply to a whole family of tools at once (for example, which domains the web tools may reach).
• Per-tool rules override the family rule for a single tool.
• Hooks are policy gates that run at the moment a tool is called — they can require confirmation, check a value against an allowlist, or deny outright.

Privileged actions (resetting a password, changing a record) are gated this way by default, and every such action is written to an audit trail.

Channels are where the agent meets people

A Channel is how employees reach the agent: the embeddable web widget, Slack, and more. One agent can serve several channels at once. An agent with no channel is invisible — connecting a channel is what makes it live.

Identity connects a request to a person

When a request arrives, Cobalt resolves who is asking so the agent can act on their behalf and apply the right policy. Administrators sign in to the console through your SSO provider; end users are identified per channel, and Identity Rules map an inbound user (a Slack ID, an email) to a known person. See Identity & access.

Sensitivity and tenancy

Each Skillset has a sensitivity of standard (the default) or elevated. Marking work elevated — for PHI, compensation, credentials, or security operations — routes it only to models covered by a Business Associate Agreement, tightens PII handling and retention, and isolates its memory under a separate key.

Every object in Cobalt belongs to one Tenant (your organization). Tenant isolation is enforced at the data layer, so one tenant can never see another’s data.

Where to go next

Build your agent

Profile, capabilities, skillsets, and tools.

Integrations

Connect external systems — the primary capability path.

Connect channels

Put your agent in front of employees.

Glossary

Every term in one place.