Agents
An agent is the thing that talks. Everything else — a number, a knowledge base, a calendar connection — is something you hand to an agent. This page covers building one properly, rather than the quick version.
What an agent holds
Six things travel together as “an agent”:
| Setting | What it controls | Changes the call how? |
|---|---|---|
| Name & description | How you find it in your own lists. Callers never hear it. | Not at all |
| Instructions | Everything it says and refuses to say. The single biggest lever. | Enormously |
| Voice & language | What it sounds like and which language it speaks. | First impression |
| Model | Which AI does the thinking. Default is fast and cheap. | Speed vs. nuance |
| Tools & integrations | What it can actually do besides talk. | Turns talk into work |
| Phone number | How people reach it, and what shows when it calls out. | Whether it rings at all |
Nothing is billed for having an agent — your plan just caps how many you can have. So do not build one clever agent that handles five jobs badly. Build five focused agents, each with short instructions. They are easier to write, faster on the call, and far easier to debug.
Creating one
Two routes, and it is worth knowing which is which:
- Setup Guide — the guided path. Fewer questions, good defaults, buys a number for you. Best for your first agent and for quick additions.
- AgentsCreate Agent — the full six-step builder. Every setting exposed, including speech timing and background audio. Use it when you know what you want to change.
Both produce the same kind of agent. Anything the Setup Guide did not ask you is editable afterwards in the full builder, so starting simple costs nothing.
The six steps of the full builder
Identity
Name and description, both for your eyes only. Name by function —
Inbound · clinic reception,Outbound · renewal reminders— because in six months you will have several and “Test Agent 3” will mean nothing.Instructions
The system prompt, plus the first thing the agent says. This is where the quality lives and it deserves its own page — Writing instructions.
You also choose the model here. Claude Haiku 4.5 is the default and the right answer for almost everyone: it is fast, and on a phone call speed reads as intelligence. Kimi K2.5 trades a little speed for more reasoning, worth trying if your agent has to juggle complex rules. GPT-4o requires your own OpenAI key.
The instructions box supports variables that are filled in per call:
{{company_name}},{{phone_number}},{{agent_name}},{{date}}and{{time}}. Using{{date}}is how you get an agent that correctly understands “tomorrow”.Voice
Ten voices, plus the conversation timing controls. The timing controls are the difference between an agent that interrupts and one that feels natural — Voice & conversation explains each slider and what to set it to.
Tools
Attach the actions this agent may take: transferring to a human, ending the call, sending an SMS, hitting your webhook. Also here: voicemail detection, which you want on for any outbound agent so it stops talking to answerphones.
Integrations are attached separately, from the Integrations page — a connected app is not automatically available to every agent.
Phone
Attach a number in
+E.164format (+254712345678), or skip and do it later from Phone Numbers. An agent with no number can still place outbound test calls; it just cannot receive anything.Review
A summary of everything. Read the instructions one more time here — it is the last point where a contradiction is obvious before you hear it on a call.
Managing agents day to day
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Edit | Opens the same six-step builder on an existing agent. Changes apply to the next call — no redeploy. |
| Clone | Copies everything into a new agent. The fastest way to make a second language version or a variant to A/B. |
| Place outbound call | Has this agent phone a number you type in. Your main testing tool. |
| Copy ID | The agent’s identifier, needed when wiring up webhooks and API calls. |
| Delete | Moves it to Recently Deleted rather than destroying it. |
A deleted agent goes to the Recently Deleted tab and can be restored at any time. Its phone number is detached — but kept on your account, not released — so you can reattach it to the restored agent or to a different one. You will not lose a number by deleting an agent.
Testing changes safely
There is no staging environment, and you do not need one. Clone the live agent, edit the clone, test-call the clone, and when you are happy, copy the change into the live one. Two minutes, zero risk to callers.
How many agents do I need?
One per job, not one per department and not one per customer. The test: if two conversations would need different opening lines or different escalation rules, they are different agents.
One inbound receptionist that books and answers questions. One outbound agent that phones tomorrow’s patients to confirm. Different jobs, different scripts.
Inbound support. Instant callback for new web leads. An outbound renewals agent that works a list each month.
A member self-service agent connected to the core banking ledger, and an outbound arrears agent with much more careful language.
Instructions become a maze of “if the caller is X then…”, every reply gets slower, and a fix for one job breaks another.
Agent questions
Can two agents share one phone number?
No — a number points at exactly one agent, because an incoming call has to be answered by something specific. If you need routing between agents, use one front-door agent with a Handoff tool that passes the caller to a specialist agent mid-call.
Can one agent have several numbers?
Yes. Several numbers can point at the same agent — common when you run local numbers in multiple cities but want one consistent experience.
Do I need to redeploy after editing?
No. Save, and the next call uses the new configuration. A call already in progress finishes on the old one.
What is voicemail detection and should I turn it on?
It detects an answering machine and stops the agent delivering its pitch to a beep. Turn it on for every outbound agent. Leave it off for inbound, where it is not relevant and only adds a moment of delay.
Can I stop an agent temporarily without deleting it?
Detach its phone number. The agent and all its configuration stay exactly as they are, and nothing can reach it. Reattach when you want it back.