Add a Specialist Agent
The single most effective way to make an Agent Stack better is to add another focused specialist. This walks through adding one to an existing stack.
Before you start
- The stack must already exist. If you don’t have one yet, create an Agent Stack first.
- Decide the specialist’s scope: a one-line description of which questions it should handle. “Billing, invoices, refunds, subscription changes” is a good scope. “Customer help” is not — it’s not specific enough to route to.
Steps
- Open Settings → Agent Stacks and click into the stack you want to add a specialist to.
- Click the Agents tab. (You can also use the Orchestrator canvas, but the Agents tab is the most direct path for adding a new one.)
- Click Add at the top right of the agent list to open the Add Specialist Agent dialog.
- Fill in:
Name — what this specialist is called internally. Customers never see it; replies go out under the stack’s name. Examples: Billing Support, Returns Specialist, Onboarding Guide.
Scope — the responsibility text. Used by the router. Be topical, not flowery. Example: Billing, invoices, refunds, subscription changes. (On the Setup tab afterwards, the same field is labelled Responsibility.) - Click Create Agent. The specialist is created and selected in the list.
- The right pane now shows the specialist’s drilldown with four sub-tabs: Setup, Capabilities, Knowledge, Playbooks.
- On the Setup tab, fill in Instructions — specialist-specific behavior. Required steps, things to always do, things to never reveal, escalation triggers, reply format. Don’t restate the scope here; the router already used that. Don’t put tone here; tone is stack-wide on the Personality tab.
Verify it worked
- The new specialist appears in the agent list on the left.
- On the Orchestrator canvas it shows up as a new node. Hover over it to see the routing summary card.
- Open the Testing tab and send a message that matches the specialist’s scope. The routing decision itself is only rendered for Super Admins, so if you aren’t one, check that the answer reads like the new specialist’s rather than looking for a routing line.
Next: wire knowledge and capabilities
A new specialist starts with no capabilities and no code-base access. Knowledge is not blank, though: it is created with the Knowledge Base on at Full access — every category of whatever knowledge base the stack is bound to — and the Handbook off. To make it actually useful:
- Set its knowledge access. Narrow the Knowledge Base to specific categories if full access is too broad, and turn the Handbook on if it needs one.
- Add capabilities. From the Capabilities sub-tab, attach the tools / actions this specialist needs. Set the proof level for each — No proof, Verified customer, or Signed-in customer. See What are Capabilities?.
- Optional: tune routing. Most stacks don’t need this — the scope text alone is enough, and a routing topic is derived from it automatically. If the LLM keeps mis-routing, sharpen the scope or add an orchestrator-level routing rule.
Troubleshooting
- Symptom: The new specialist shows a warning triangle (“No routing signals”) on the Orchestrator canvas. Fix: the Responsibility is empty and there are no routing topics. Open the specialist, fill in Responsibility on the Setup tab, click Save Changes.
- Symptom: The router never picks the new specialist even though messages match. Fix: check the Orchestrator routing rules — a tenant or stack rule might be biasing routing toward another specialist.