Behavior

Your agent’s behavior is defined in plain english - no code, just instructions on what it is supposed to do and how. Additional tools help it complete its job successfully.

Your Agent’s Instructions

Through your initial chat conversation, Violet provided your agent a set of instructions:

• What your agent does: The main purpose and goals
• How it should behave: The tone, personality, and approach
• Step-by-step processes: Your methodology or workflow
• Important context: Key information your agent needs to know
• Smart references: Connection to fields in your databases and your preferences to support structured use of data

Smart References

Within your instructions, we @mention preferences or databases you have created, as well as system variables like your customer’s name or email address. Adding these to your instructionshelps your agent know precisely how to utilize these variables.

Tools and Skills

In addition to its broad instructions, your agent has Skill and Tools - these give your agent the ability to do things beyond just chatting.

Tools: Built-in Superpowers

Tools are ready-made capabilities we’ve built for you, like:

We provide some default tools to begin with, like ‘userChat’, ‘fileSystem,’ ‘googleSearch’, and ‘websiteScraper’. Simply click to add or remove tools so your agent has what it needs to accomplish its goals.

Click on the name of a tool within builder.appy.ai to learn that tool’s purpose

Skills: Your Custom Capabilities

Skills are custom capabilities created when you need your agent to do something specific that requires detailed instructions. Create a new skill when:

• You have a complex sub-process that needs lots of detailed guidance
• You want to isolate a specific, repeatable task
• The main instructions are getting too long and complex

Think of skills as specialized tasks your agent can do - like “analyze a business proposal” or “create a workout plan.”

For many agents, custom skills are unnecessary - all instructions can remain under behavior

How It All Works Together

Your agent reads its instructions, then automatically decides which skills and tools to use based on what the user needs. You don’t have to manage when or how - just give good instructions and select the right capabilities.

Configure with Violet (Chat)

Ask Violet to refine your agent’s behavior:

• “My agent should help users analyze financial reports. It needs to be professional and data-focused.”
• “I don’t like how it starts a conversation. Can you have it always give a warm greeting that reminds users of its purpose.”
• “Create a skill for summarizing research papers”
• “Make my agent more conversational and friendly in tone”
• “Reference the user’s preferred industry from their preferences in every interaction”

Violet updates your instructions, adds tools and skills, and helps you refine the behavior through conversation.

Configure Manually

Access instructions, skills, and tools directly through Behavior:

1. Write or edit your agent’s Instructions in plain English
2. Use @mentions to reference preferences, databases, or system variables
3. Click Add Tool to select from available built-in tools
4. Click Create Skill to add custom capabilities with detailed instructions
5. Click the chevron below Publish for advanced configuration options like selecting your LLM model
6. Use Preview to test your agent’s behavior

Testing Agent Behavior

Testing your agent is always one click away. Select a menu item or start chatting to begin using your agent. You can make real time adjustments to behavior, skills, and tools and see how it impacts the preview.

Getting Started

1. Start with clear instructions about your agent’s main purpose
2. Add essential tools like userChat and googleSearch
3. Test your agent to see how it performs
4. Refine and add skills as needed for complex tasks

Start simple and adjust based on testing! It’s easier to start with basic instructions and refine based on observation than to over-instruct to begin with.