Custom agents FAQ

Custom agents are agents you design yourself. Each one carries its own prompt, skills, knowledge base, and memory, and you can chat with it, assign it tasks, and share it with your workspace. This FAQ answers the questions that come up most often. To build your first one, start with Getting started with custom agents.

What is a custom agent?

A custom agent is an agent you design, with its own prompt, skills, knowledge base, and memory. You describe the agent you want in plain language, and Obvious builds it with its own name and picture. What it's for is up to you: a research agent that digests what's new for your team, a reviewer for your code, or an assistant that remembers what it learns as it works. Work that repeats is one common reason to build one, but it's not the definition: an agent can just as well take on a broader role that grows as you work with it.

If you just need guidance that applies inside one project, Project Instructions is the simpler choice. A custom agent is an agent in its own right: it does the work, and it's with you anywhere in your workspace.

How is a custom agent different from Agent, Autobuild, and Draft?

Agent, Autobuild, and Draft are the built-in modes. Each is tuned for a broad kind of work: everyday tasks, shipping code, and deep research write-ups. You don't configure them, and they're the same for everyone.

A custom agent is one you design. It has a name and a prompt of its own, it can carry skills and a knowledge base, and it remembers things between conversations. Teammates can use it, and it gets better as you give it feedback. For an overview of the built-in modes, read Agents Overview.

What happened to custom modes?

Custom modes let you save adjusted versions of the built-in modes. That idea grew into custom agents. Instead of tweaking the settings of an existing mode, you describe the agent you want and Obvious builds it, complete with its own prompt, skills, knowledge base, and memory. If you relied on a custom mode, Getting started with custom agents shows how to build an agent that does the same job.

Where do custom agents show up?

In chat, click the mode selector at the bottom-right of the chat input. Custom agents appear below the built-in modes, listed by name: agents you own under Your agents, and agents shared with you under Shared with you. Select one to run your next message with that agent. If neither section appears, no custom agent is available to you yet.

To manage your agents, open the Custom Agents page. Yours are listed under My agents, and agents people have shared with you under Shared with me.

Open an agent and click Favorite to start a project chatting with it directly.

Who can create a custom agent?

Any member of a workspace that has custom agents can build one.

Who can use an agent I've built?

That's up to you. A new agent is private: only you can see it and use it. You can share it with specific people or teams, choosing whether they can use it or also edit it, or make it available to everyone in your workspace.

How do I share an agent, or set one as the workspace default?

Open the agent and click Share. Turn on the workspace option to make it available to everyone, or add people and teams and choose their level of access. An agent can also be set as your workspace's default agent.

Where else can a custom agent work besides chat?

Besides chat, custom agents can work in Slack channels and DMs, in Microsoft Teams channels, and over email. When an agent is connected to a channel, it can be set up to respond only when someone mentions it, or to follow along quietly.

What can a custom agent remember?

You decide. When you build an agent, you choose whether it has memory and how far its memory reaches: private to you, scoped to each project, or shared across your workspace. New agents start with project memory. As the agent works, it remembers what matters, and you can tell it to remember or forget something directly.

Can a custom agent use skills?

Yes. Choose the agent's skills while you build it, or add them later from the Skills and actions tab. Turn on Use all skills to give the agent every skill in your workspace, or pick specific ones. To learn what skills are, read Skills.

Can I assign tasks to a custom agent?

Yes. Assign a task to a custom agent the way you'd assign it to a teammate, and it takes the work on with its own prompt, skills, and memory. You can also start one directly from the agent's page with New task. It reports back when the work is done.

Why am I seeing feedback prompts on my new agent?

Every new agent starts in an onboarding phase. While it's onboarding, chat shows quick rating options on the agent's replies, so you and your teammates can flag what's working and what isn't. The agent becomes active only when you finish onboarding yourself: open the agent and click Complete onboarding. An agent never moves to active on its own, no matter how much feedback it collects.

What if my agent isn't behaving the way I want?

Rate its replies while it's onboarding, or leave a note on a message. Ratings are grouped into suggestions on the agent's Feedback tab, where you can apply each change or dismiss it. You can also describe the fix in plain language, and the agent's profile is rewritten to match. Every change is kept in a revision history you can revert to.

What can workspace admins control?

Workspace admins can see every agent in the workspace and how much each one is being used. They can disable an agent, which stops it, hide an agent from the mode picker, transfer an agent to a new owner, or delete one permanently. Disabling and hiding are reversible.

How do I edit, disable, or delete an agent?

Open the agent and use the Configuration tab to change its setup: memory and what it's good at live there. To change its skills, use the Skills and actions tab. Changes save as you go.

To take an agent out of rotation, archive it. Archiving removes the agent from the mode picker and your agent list, keeps the conversations it has already had, and can be undone. In the Configuration tab, click Archive agent, then Yes, archive. Workspace admins can also disable an agent for the whole workspace from the admin view.

If someone shared an agent with you and you want your own copy, use Duplicate to my agents on its Overview tab.