> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://verbatim-ai.gitbook.io/docs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://verbatim-ai.gitbook.io/docs/agents.md). # Agents An **agent** is the setup behind an answer. It decides how widely your documents are searched, which excerpts survive, what instruction the model receives, how much of the conversation is replayed, and which model writes the reply. You reach them from the **Agents** tab in the navigation bar, or from the **Agents** card on your dashboard. ## Two kinds of agent The list holds both, platform agents first. * 🔒 **Platform agents** belong to Verbatim AI and are shared by every organization. You can read them and use them, but not change or delete them. One carries a **Default** badge: it is the agent that answers when a question names none. * ⭐ **Your agents** are yours — create, tune and delete them freely. The agent answering you right now carries an **Active** chip, next to the **Default** badge when the two are the same agent. **Tap a card to open the agent**, which shows everything it is set to. The Agents list only ever reads: which agent answers you is decided on the agent's own page, by a button that says so. ## Choosing the one that answers you 🎯 Creating an agent does not put it to work — you pick which one answers you, and the pick is yours rather than any one conversation's. Three places write that choice: * An agent's own page, opened from the **Agents** list: **Use this agent**, pinned to the bottom. The agent already answering shows **No more use** there instead, which hands your questions back to the default one. * The 🤖 button in the header of a [Story](/docs/stories.md). * The **Agent** section of your [profile](/docs/profile.md). All three write the same choice. The last two open a picker listing every agent you can use, the agent carrying the **Default** badge among them, each card showing its name, what it is for and its reasoning effort. The one answering you right now carries a tick. Tap another and it takes effect immediately. The Agents list used to be a picker too, so a tap on a card changed the agent behind every later question. That made it easy to change by accident, and it now takes opening the agent and pressing a button. There is no separate "no agent" option, because there is no such thing: until you pick, the agent with the **Default** badge is the one answering. Going back to it is simply choosing it — or pressing **No more use** on the agent you are on. ### How long a choice lasts It holds for the conversation you are in **and the ones after it**, and it survives closing the app — you are not re-picking every morning. The 🤖 button is **lit while you are on an agent of your own** and plain while you are on the default, and its tooltip names whichever is answering. Answers already written keep the agent that produced them, so a conversation stays readable as it happened. And if you delete the agent you had picked, you go back to the default one — an agent that no longer exists cannot answer anything. ## Creating one The **+** button opens a new agent. **Only a name is required.** Everything else starts on Verbatim AI's own settings, so an agent saved with nothing but a name behaves exactly like the default agent — and is free to drift from it whenever you are ready. That is the recommended way to start. ## Forking a platform agent 🍴 A platform agent cannot be edited — but it can be the place you start from. Open one from the list and use the **Fork** button at the bottom of the page. The create form arrives carrying **every setting of the agent you forked**, with one field left empty: the **name**. The copy is a new agent and needs one of its own, and two agents answering to the same name would be impossible to tell apart in the list or the picker. From there it is an ordinary create. Change as much or as little as you like, then save — your copy joins your agents, **fully editable even though the original never was**, and the agent you copied is left exactly as it was. The button appears on platform agents only. Your own agents already have **Edit**, which is the thing a fork would otherwise be standing in for. ## What you can tune ### Identity A **name** to recognise it by, and an optional **description** of what it is for. ### Retrieval * **Chunks retrieved** — how many document excerpts the search brings back. Wider means more to draw on, and more noise. Between 5 and 10 is a sensible start. * **Re-rank results** — put a model in front of the excerpts to sort them by relevance. * **Chunks kept** — how many survive that pass. * **Re-ranking model** — the model doing the sorting. Re-ranking needs one; without it the switch has nothing to run, and the form will say so. ### System instruction Three texts, joined in this order into the single instruction the model reads: * **Context** — what the model is looking at. * **Behaviour** — how it should act. * **Tone** — how the answer should sound. ### Conversation * **Replay the conversation** — on, earlier messages come back into context; off, every question is answered on its own. * **Messages replayed** — how many of the latest ones. Leave it empty to replay the whole conversation. ### Model * **Answering model** — the model that writes the reply. * **Reasoning effort** — **Fast** or **Thorough**. Thorough is slower but handles harder questions. * **Temperature** — how much the model may vary its wording. The lower it is, the more repeatable the answer. ## Platform defaults, and what "empty" means 🌱 Every optional setting reads **Platform default** until you pin a value. That is not the same as blank: it means the agent follows a value Verbatim AI maintains, and **moves with it** when we improve it. The consequence worth knowing: **clearing a field puts it back to following the platform**, it does not blank it. That is usually what you want when a value you pinned earlier is no longer serving you. Some settings can never be cleared, because an agent always needs one — the name, the number of chunks retrieved, the two switches, and the reasoning effort. ## Editing and deleting Open an agent by tapping its card, then use the **Edit** button at the bottom of the page — the same corner a platform agent offers **Fork** in, since only one of the two ever applies. Platform agents have no Edit action, and the edit page refuses them outright. The 🗑️ bin on the edit page deletes the agent for good, after a typed confirmation. Deleting does not rewrite the past: answers already produced with the agent keep naming it, so conversations stay readable exactly as they happened. And if it was the agent you had picked, you go back to the default one from then on. --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com. ## Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter, and the optional `goal` query parameter: ``` GET https://verbatim-ai.gitbook.io/docs/agents.md?ask=&goal= ``` `ask` is the immediate question: it should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. `goal` is optional and describes the broader end goal you are ultimately trying to accomplish on behalf of the user. GitBook uses it to tailor the answer towards what is most useful for that goal. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.