Create an Agent Stack
This walks you through creating a new Agent Stack from scratch using the guided setup wizard. You’ll end with a stack containing one or more specialists, optional knowledge access, and a chosen personality preset — ready to test.
Before you start
- A user role with Settings → Agent Stacks permission.
- A clear answer to “what is this stack going to do?” — one or two sentences. The wizard uses this to suggest specialists and seed instructions.
- (Optional) Knowledge Base categories you want the AI to read from. You can add these later.
Steps
- Open Settings → Agent Stacks.
- Click New stack in the top-right.
- Choose how to create the stack:
Start from scratch to build a new stack with the guided setup wizard.
Copy from existing to clone an existing stack and adjust it for a new use case or channel type.
Start from scratch
- Choose the stack type:
Text for chat, email, and other text-based channels.
Voice for voice-based conversations. Voice stacks are available only when the AI voice feature flag is enabled.
If no type is selected or provided, the stack defaults to Text. 2. Step 1 — Purpose. Give the stack a name (what your team will call it internally) and write 1–2 sentences describing what it should do. Example: “Handle inbound support for our e-commerce store. Answer order questions, process simple cancellations, escalate billing issues to humans.” 3. Step 2 — Specialists. The wizard suggests a starter set of specialists based on your purpose — Order Tracker, Cancellation Expert, Returns Specialist, etc. Toggle each suggestion on or off, edit names and scope, or click Add custom agent to add your own. Each suggestion has a name, a one-line description (the responsibility / scope), and a topic list. 4. Step 3 — Knowledge. Pick which Knowledge Base categories these specialists should read from, and which Handbook categories. Choose Full to give access to everything, Select to pick categories, or Skip to wire knowledge later. 5. Step 4 — Personality. Pick a persona preset — Friendly Helpdesk, Expert Advisor, Concierge, Efficient, Brand Playful, or None. The dimensions snap to the preset’s values; you can tune them on the Personality tab afterwards. 6. Step 5 — Review and create. Confirm the configuration and click Create stack.
The wizard creates the stack, the specialists, the knowledge bindings, and the personality config. You’re dropped into the stack’s detail view — by default on the General tab.
Copy from existing
Choose an existing stack to copy, then confirm the new stack details. Copying clones the stack settings, specialists, and handover prerequisites from the source stack. You can use it to create a text or voice counterpart of an existing stack, then adjust the copied configuration before testing and enabling it on channels.
Voice availability follows the same rules as creating a stack from scratch: creating a voice copy from a text stack requires the AI voice feature flag. Tenants that already have voice stacks can still copy an existing voice stack as another voice stack. If the copy dialog shows a type selector, the Voice option may be hidden or unavailable unless the tenant has voice access or is copying an existing voice stack.
Verify it worked
- The new stack appears in Settings → Agent Stacks in the left list.
- Open the Orchestrator tab. You should see the stack diagram with the orchestrator at the top and one node for each specialist.
- Open the Testing tab and chat as a customer. The router should pick a relevant specialist and reply in the personality you chose.
What’s next
After the stack exists, the typical next steps are:
- Wire it to channels. A stack only handles conversations on the channels you enable. See your channel settings (Email, Web Chat, Voice, etc.) to enable the AI agent on the channels you want.
- Configure handover. By default a new stack has handover off (
never). Turn it on and pick a team if you want the AI to escalate to humans. - Add capabilities. Capabilities let the AI act, not just talk — look up orders, process refunds, etc.
- Test and tune. Use the Testing tab to flag bad replies and apply the proposed fixes.
Troubleshooting
- Symptom: “Knowledge Base scoping” or “Handbook access rules” appears in a “Couldn’t apply” toast after creation. Fix: the stack and specialists were created, but the post-creation knowledge wiring failed (often a permission gap on KB categories). Open the Orchestrator tab, drill into a specialist, and configure Knowledge from there.
- Symptom: “Personality preset” failed to apply. Fix: open the Personality tab and pick the preset again. The save will succeed when called from the tab itself.
- Symptom: No suggested specialists appear in Step 2. Fix: the AI suggestion call failed. Use Add custom agent to add your specialists by hand.