Create your first agent

A walk-through of the agent setup flow, step by step.

Create your first agent

Creating an agent is a short guided flow. You start from a template, connect the systems the agent needs, then shape how it talks and what it won’t do. This page explains each step and what good looks like.

Screenshots are coming as Cobalt nears launch. For now this walk-through describes each step so you know what to expect.

1. Choose a template

Templates pre-select the integrations a typical agent of that kind needs, so you start most of the way there:

Template	Good for	Pre-selected systems
IT agent	Internal IT service desk	Service desk + identity provider
HR agent	HR support and questions	HRIS + identity provider
Multi-domain agent	One agent for IT and HR	Service desk + identity provider
Blank agent	Anything else	Nothing — you choose

Pick the closest fit. Nothing here is permanent — every choice is editable after the agent is live.

2. Confirm the essentials

The template proposes one system per role it needs — for example a service desk and an identity provider for an IT agent. For each role you can keep the default, switch to an alternative, or clear it. This is where you decide which of your systems the agent connects to.

3. Add other integrations

Add any additional systems the agent should reach — a productivity suite, a collaboration tool, a file store. You can always add more later, so keep the first set focused on what the agent needs on day one.

4. Authorize access

Review the access each integration requests and authorize it. Some integrations connect on behalf of each end user (the agent only ever sees what that user can already see); others need an administrator to grant access once. You can finish setup here and authorize, or continue and authorize at the end. See Integrations for how this works.

5. Set personality

Give the agent a voice. Start from a preset and edit it freely:

• Direct & efficient — calm and competent; confirms before destructive actions; cites sources.
• Warm & explanatory — approachable; explains the why before the how.
• Terse — one sentence where possible.
• Formal — full sentences, professional register.

The preset just seeds a text box — make it yours. This maps to the agent’s Personality and related profile fields, which you can refine any time on the agent profile.

6. Set safety boundaries

Turn on the boundaries the agent must respect. Common ones include:

• Never repeat SSNs, credit cards, or unmasked PII.
• Don’t promise response times or SLAs.
• Hand off to a human if sentiment turns clearly negative.
• Refuse HR, legal, or compensation topics and hand off to a human.

Each boundary is either a hard rule (refuse outright) or a soft one (prefer to hand off). You can add your own.

7. Create and try it

Cobalt creates the agent and shows the status of each integration it connected. From here:

1. Open Preview and ask the agent a real question.
2. Refine its profile and capabilities until it behaves the way you want.
3. Connect a channel to put it in front of employees.

The agent improves as real conversations arrive — Cobalt surfaces where coverage is thin so you know what to add next.