Agents Overview

Agents are the AI assistants at the heart of Duckie. Each agent is a configured AI that handles customer conversations or Duckie configuration tasks according to your instructions, resources, and deployment settings.

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What is an Agent?

An agent is a complete AI assistant configured with:

• Start mode — Autonomous, Duckie Assistant, workflow, or runbook behavior
• Instructions — The agent’s role, scope, and decision rules
• Knowledge — Sources it can search for information
• Guidelines — Rules for communication style and tone
• Guardrails — Safety constraints and escalation rules
• Tools — Actions it can perform (respond, search, escalate, call APIs)

Think of each agent as a specialized team member trained for a specific job.

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Agent Capabilities

Agents can:

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Start Modes

Every agent has a start mode:

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Agent Configuration

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Knowledge Sources

Control what information the agent can access:

• Leave knowledge tags empty to allow all connected and custom knowledge
• Use knowledge tags to narrow what’s searchable
• Mix connected sources with custom articles

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Guidelines

Shape how the agent communicates:

• Tone and voice (friendly, professional, casual)
• Response format and length
• Brand terminology and phrases
• Domain-specific instructions

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Guardrails

Define safety boundaries:

• Escalation rules — When to hand off to humans
• Restrictions — What the agent cannot do or say

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Classification

Configure how conversations are tagged:

• Categories (Billing, Technical Support, etc.)
• Custom attributes (Priority, Product Area, etc.)

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Multiple Agents

You can create multiple agents for different purposes: Each agent can have completely different knowledge, guidelines, and behavior.

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Agent vs Runbook vs Workflow

An agent can start autonomously, as Duckie Assistant, from a workflow, or from a runbook. It then combines that start mode with the configuration that applies to that mode.

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Next Steps