AI Agents
Build intelligent agents that automate complex tasks, make decisions and integrate with your existing tools.
What are AI Agents?
AI agents are smart assistants that understand what you need done and figure out how to do it. Unlike traditional automation that breaks at the first unexpected response, agents adapt, make decisions and get the job done.
With Scout, you can build agents that:
- Connect to all your tools, including Slack, Google Workspace, CRMs and databases
- Handle complex requests like “Find all customers who haven’t ordered in 90 days and send them personalized re-engagement emails”
- Work autonomously while you focus on strategy
- Try alternative approaches when something doesn’t work
How Agents Work
Every Scout agent runs a simple loop under the hood:
- You give the agent a goal in plain English via chat or a scheduled trigger
- The agent picks tools from the ones you’ve connected (search the web, query a database, send a Slack message, run custom code, etc.)
- It calls those tools, reads the results and decides what to do next
- It keeps going until the goal is done or it needs to ask you something
The agent’s instructions tell it who it is, what it’s for and any guardrails to follow. The tools give it hands. The LLM gives it judgment.
This means you can describe a goal like “clean up duplicate contacts in HubSpot” and the agent figures out the steps, handles edge cases and reports back when it’s done. You don’t wire up logic for every scenario. You describe the outcome you want.
Agents vs. Traditional Workflows
The Old Way: Rigid Workflows
You’ve probably built these before: if this, then that. They work until they don’t:
- Customer email doesn’t match expected format, workflow breaks
- API returns different data, workflow breaks
- New edge case appears, back to the drawing board
The Scout Way: Intelligent Agents
Give your agent a goal in plain English and let it figure out the path:
- “Process all support tickets and escalate the urgent ones”
- “Research our top five competitors and summarize their pricing”
- “Find meeting times that work for everyone and book the room”
The agent handles complexity, edge cases and unexpected situations automatically.
Agent Marketplace: Start with Templates
The Agent Marketplace is the fastest way to get started. Instead of building from scratch, choose from pre-built templates designed for common business tasks.
Why Use Templates?
- Zero configuration — instructions, tools and settings are pre-configured
- Guided setup — walks you through connecting required integrations
- Battle-tested — built on patterns that work for real teams
- Customizable — modify anything after installation
Available Templates
| Template | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Meeting Prep | Research companies, pull recent news and prepare call briefings |
| Competitor Intel | Monitor competitors and deliver intelligence reports |
| Deal Monitor | Watch your pipeline for at-risk deals and recommend actions |
| Seller Guidance | Real-time coaching and deal strategy recommendations |
| CRM Hygiene | Automated data validation and CRM cleanup |
See the Agent Templates page for detailed descriptions of each template.
How It Works
- Browse the marketplace at studio.scoutos.com/agents/marketplace
- Click Install on your chosen template
- Follow the guided setup to connect your tools
- Start chatting with your new agent
Your agent is ready in under two minutes.
Key Capabilities
Connect Everything, Configure Nothing
Forget wrestling with API keys and OAuth flows. Scout handles authentication for you:
- One-click connections to popular tools
- Secure credential management
- Automatic token refresh
- No code required
Build Custom Tools in Minutes
Need your agent to do something specific? Create custom tools using Scout workflows:
- Build a workflow in the visual builder (no code needed)
- Save it as a tool
- Your agent can now use it like any other capability
Example: A “Check Inventory and Reorder” tool that connects your inventory system, calculates reorder points and places orders with suppliers.
Run Code Safely in a Sandbox
Need deterministic compute or custom API logic? Enable Code Execution so agents can write JavaScript or TypeScript and run it in a secure runtime.
Use it for structured API calls, transforms and calculations when plain prompting isn’t enough.
See Code Execution for setup and best practices.
Built-in Scheduling
Run agents automatically without building workflows:
- Daily, weekly or custom cron schedules
- Trigger from the agent’s Triggers tab
- No workflow required
Agent Collaboration
Agents can work together:
- Multi-agent chats — mention multiple agents in a single conversation
- Agent delegation — one agent delegates tasks to specialized agents
- Panel of judges — multiple agents review and validate outputs
See Agent Delegation for more on multi-agent collaboration.
Common Questions
“What’s the difference between an agent and a workflow?” Workflows are deterministic pipelines: input goes in, steps run in order, output comes out. They’re great for predictable, repeatable tasks. Agents are goal-driven: you describe what you want done and the agent figures out the steps, handles surprises and asks for help when it’s stuck. Use workflows when you know every step in advance. Use agents when the path to the goal depends on what you find along the way.
“How reliable are agents?” Very. Scout agents include built-in error handling and can gracefully recover from issues. You can review every session in Observability to see exactly what the agent did and why.
“What if I need something super specific?” Build it. The workflow builder lets you create custom tools without code. If you can describe the logic, you can build it.
“Can agents work together?” Yes. Use multi-agent chats or agent delegation to have specialized agents collaborate on a single task.
“Should I start with a template or build from scratch?” Start with a template if one matches your use case. You can always customize it later. Build from scratch when you need something unique.
Next Steps
- Getting Started with Agents — create your first AI agent with templates or from scratch
- Observability — review sessions, logs and tagged interaction history
- Copilot — deploy an agent on your website or in your app
- Code Execution — let agents run JS/TS in a secure sandbox
- Integrations — connect Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Notion, email and more
- Agent Templates — explore available pre-built templates
- Workflows — learn how to build the workflows that power your agents’ tools
Built with ❤️ by Scout OS