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Add a Specialist Agent

Add a new specialist agent to an existing Agent Stack — give it a name, a scope, and instructions, then wire knowledge and capabilities.

5 min read

Add a Specialist Agent

The single most effective way to make an Agent Stack better is to add another focused specialist. This walks through adding one to an existing stack.

Before you start

  • The stack must already exist. If you don’t have one yet, create an Agent Stack first.
  • Decide the specialist’s scope: a one-line description of which questions it should handle. “Billing, invoices, refunds, subscription changes” is a good scope. “Customer help” is not — it’s not specific enough to route to.

Steps

  1. Open Settings → Agent Stacks and click into the stack you want to add a specialist to.
  2. Click the Agents tab. (The Orchestrator canvas opens the same specialist editor, but only for specialists that already exist — adding a new one is done here.)
  3. Click Add at the top right of the agent list to open the Add Specialist Agent dialog.
  4. Choose how to add the specialist:
    Create new — create a new specialist for this stack.
    Reuse existing — add a specialist that already exists in another stack.
  5. If you choose Create new, fill in:
    Name — what this specialist is called. Replies are attributed as Stack · Specialist, which webchat visitors see when the widget’s Show Sender Identity setting is on (it is off by default). Examples: Billing Support, Returns Specialist, Onboarding Guide.
    Scope — the responsibility text. Used by the router. Be topical, not flowery. Example: Billing, invoices, refunds, subscription changes. (On the Setup tab afterwards, the same field is labelled Responsibility.)
  6. Click Create Agent. The specialist is created and selected in the list.
  7. If you choose Reuse existing, pick the specialist you want to add, then choose:
    Share this agent — use one shared specialist configuration across stacks.
    Make a copy — create an independent duplicate that you can change without affecting the original.
  8. Confirm your choice. The specialist is added to the stack and selected in the list.
  9. The right pane now shows the specialist’s drilldown with four sub-tabs: Setup, Capabilities, Knowledge, Playbooks.
  10. On the Setup tab, fill in Instructions — specialist-specific behavior. Required steps, things to always do, things to never reveal, escalation triggers, reply format. Don’t restate the scope here; the router already used that. Don’t put tone here; tone is stack-wide on the Personality tab.

Shared specialists show a Shared badge. If you edit a shared specialist’s setup, knowledge, or capabilities, those changes apply in every stack that uses that specialist.

Verify it worked

  • The new specialist appears in the agent list on the left.
  • On the Orchestrator canvas it shows up as a new node. Hover over it to see the routing summary card.
  • Open the Testing tab and send a message that matches the specialist’s scope. Every reply is labelled with the name of the specialist that answered it. The routing decision itself — the confidence and the router’s reasoning — is only rendered for Super Admins.

Next: wire knowledge and capabilities

A new specialist starts with no capabilities and no code-base access. Knowledge is not blank, though: it is created with the Knowledge Base on at Full access — every category of whatever knowledge base the stack is bound to — and the Handbook off. To make it actually useful:

  • Set its knowledge access. Narrow the Knowledge Base to specific categories if full access is too broad, and turn the Handbook on if it needs one.
  • Add capabilities. From the Capabilities sub-tab, attach the tools / actions this specialist needs. Each one inherits the capability’s own proof level; the picker only lets you require more proof than that — Verified customer or Signed-in customer — never less. See What are Capabilities?.
  • Optional: tune routing. Most stacks don’t need this — the scope text alone is enough, and a routing topic is derived from it automatically. If the LLM keeps mis-routing, sharpen the scope or add an orchestrator-level routing rule.

Troubleshooting

  • Symptom: The new specialist shows a warning triangle (“No routing signals”) on the Orchestrator canvas. Fix: the Responsibility is empty and there are no routing topics. Open the specialist, fill in Responsibility on the Setup tab, click Save Changes.
  • Symptom: The router never picks the new specialist even though messages match. Fix: check the Orchestrator routing rules — a tenant or stack rule might be biasing routing toward another specialist.

See also

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