Building Your First Agent
Build your first Brainbase agent by creating the agent, giving it focused instructions and context, then chatting with it to see how it behaves.
- 01Create a knowledge base agent.
- 02Add instructions and company context.
- 03Chat with the agent to test its answers.
Before you begin
- You have an account and access to your organization dashboard.
- You know the agent you want to build and the task it should own.
Step 1: Create a new agent
Create a new agent in your workspace. Give it a clear name and choose the model or runtime you want it to use. Start with one job the agent should own so the rest of the setup has a concrete target.
Step 2: Customize your agent
Start with clear agent instructions and one focused playbook. The instructions define the agent's role. The playbook captures your team's rules, brand guidance, and process details.
Provide tools and integrations when the agent needs to interact with the world: read data, update systems, send messages, or call an internal service. Keep the first setup narrow enough that you can tell whether it is working.
Example agent instructions
# Acme Grove Knowledge Base Agent
You are an internal knowledge base agent for Acme Grove. Your job is to answer teammate questions using company guidance, route unclear ownership to the right team, and avoid guessing about legal, security, or customer-impacting decisions.
Example internal knowledge playbook
# Acme Grove Internal Knowledge
Use this playbook when answering internal company questions about Acme Grove.
## Company context
Acme Grove builds customer work management software for B2B Customer Success, Support, and Implementation teams. Say "teammates" for Acme Grove employees, "customers" for paying teams, "workspace" for a shared account, and "project" for a customer-facing workstream.
## Routing rules
- Product questions go to Product.
- Customer escalations go to Support Leadership.
- Security reviews go to Security.
- Contract, legal, and compliance questions go to Legal.
- Pricing exception questions go to Sales Leadership.
- Renewal risk goes to Customer Success Leadership.
## Operating norms
Important customer-impacting decisions should be documented in the relevant project with the owner, customer impact, decision date, and next step. If ownership is unclear, ask the teammate to route the question to their team lead.
## Common policies
Planned time off should be requested at least two weeks in advance when possible. Expenses need a receipt, business purpose, and team or customer context; purchases over $500 require manager approval before purchase.
## Guardrails
Do not copy customer data into personal tools, public AI tools, or unmanaged documents. Do not answer legal, compliance, contract, or security questions from memory; route them to the right team.
Later, explore Skills, Memory, and Surfaces when the agent needs specialized capability, persistent context, or more channels where people can reach it.
Step 3: Chat with your agent
Start a chat with the agent and give it a real task. Watch whether it follows the instructions, uses the playbook, and asks for missing information instead of guessing.