Agents: how they work
What an AgentHere agent is made of: system prompt, model, parameters, and skills — and how they compile into a bundle.
An agent is a configured AI assistant: a role, a model, and a set of skills. You talk to it in chat or reach it over the API. This section is the anatomy of an agent.
What an agent consists of
| Part | What it controls |
|---|---|
| System prompt | Role, tone, rules of behavior |
| Model | The generation "engine" (deepseek-v4-pro, deepseek-v4-flash, glm-5.2, …) |
| Parameters | temperature, max_tokens, etc. |
| Skills | Extra instructions and tools |
| State | Active / inactive, marketplace visibility |
System prompt
This is the instruction the agent receives before every conversation. The prompt is what turns a generic model into a "lawyer", an "editor", or a "financial advisor". The more precisely it describes the role, the output format, and the boundaries, the more predictable the result. More in Configuring an agent.
Skills
A skill is a Markdown file with a step-by-step playbook (SKILL.md) that's attached to an agent.
Skills extend capabilities beyond the system prompt: they teach the agent to search jobs, plan a
menu, analyze screenshots. One agent can combine several skills. More in Skills.
The agent bundle
When you save an agent, the platform builds a bundle — a ZIP archive with the configuration and skills:
AGENT.md # system prompt + metadata (model, max_tokens)
skills/
<name>/SKILL.md
manifest.json # version, skill count, file list
The bundle version is a content hash: if nothing changed, the cached archive is served. The bundle is what the desktop app and any API client fetch. That keeps agents identical across web, desktop, and third-party clients.
Where agents live
- Personal agents — yours, in the dashboard. Only you see and use them.
- Templates — ready presets to start from, see Agent templates.
- Marketplace — agents published by the community, see Agent marketplace.
Lifecycle
An agent can be active or inactive. An inactive agent isn't shown in the chat switcher and doesn't
take part in the API, but stays in your list. Publishing to the marketplace moves an agent through
private → pending → approved.