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Autonomous AI Agents

Define an AI agent in plain English ("every morning, find leads not contacted in 48h and create a follow-up task"). Distinct from the chat-widget AI Agent — this one acts on your CRM, not your visitors.

Open in CRMown →

Steps

  1. Sidebar > Tools > AI Intelligence > AI Agents. Click "✨ New Agent".
  2. Modal step 1: name the agent (e.g., "Daily lead follow-up nudge").
  3. Step 2: describe what it should do, in plain English. The modal has 4 example prompts you can click to populate. The heavy-tier model compiles your description into a structured plan with target query + actions when you save.
  4. Step 3: pick a schedule. Preset cron picker covers Every hour / Every 4 hours / Daily morning / Weekdays 9am / Weekly Monday / etc. Or pick "Custom cron" for arbitrary schedules.
  5. Step 4: guardrails. Max actions per run (default 25, max 500). Optional "require approval" — when on, every action queues as a pending AiAction instead of executing.
  6. Step 5: optionally limit allowed action types (send_email / send_sms / create_task / create_note / move_stage / add_tag / etc.). Empty = all allowed.
  7. Click "Create Agent". The agent's detail page opens with the compiled plan, run history (empty initially), and a "▶ Run now" button to fire it manually.

Good to know

  • Action template language: use {{contact.id}} / {{contact.firstName}} / etc. in plan params, and {{now-7d}} / {{now-2h}} for date math in conditions. Resolved per-record at execution time.
  • Approval mode (requireApproval=true) creates pending AiAction rows that admins approve in the AI Actions page. Useful for audit-heavy workflows or new agents you don't fully trust yet.
  • Per-run cost is bounded by maxActionsPerRun. Each action that calls an AI sub-feature (e.g., a draft_message) consumes its own tokens — keep maxActionsPerRun low until you trust the agent.
  • Run history shows every action: type, target, executed/queued/failed status, error message if any. Click any run to expand and audit.
  • Competitor Social Monitor template: pick it in "+ New Agent" > Browse Templates > Marketing, enter up to 5 competitor websites, and it runs every morning (7am by default). It checks each competitor's website for changes, their blog/RSS posts, news coverage, and — when your admin has added the keys — new YouTube videos and a web search for their recent public social posts. CRMown AI writes a digest (what happened, why it matters, what to do) from those facts only and emails it to you. It cannot read LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or X company pages directly; the digest links to them. The websites you enter become your Marketing > Competitors list (max 5).
  • Templates auto-localize: when you open the "+ New Agent" modal, the starter templates (Lead Follow-Up Nudger, Stale Deal Closer, etc.) render in your effective language (User.locale → Org.primaryLanguage). The plain-English description that gets compiled into the agent's plan is also translated, so non-English orgs get a localized brief out of the box. Translations are cached system-wide — the first user to load templates in a new language pays one CRMown AI call; every user after that gets cached results.
Example: A 12-rep sales team sets up "Every weekday at 9am, find leads with score > 70 and lastContactAt > 5 days ago, create a follow-up task for the assigned rep with subject 'AI: Re-engage <name>'". The agent runs Mon-Fri at 9am, scans ~200 leads, surfaces 14 stale-but-hot ones, creates the tasks. Reps start their day with a curated list instead of guessing. Within a month, win rate on that segment went from 12% to 19%.

Troubleshooting

"Could not parse description" error on create
The description was too vague for the heavy-tier model to compile (e.g., "be a good agent"), or referenced fields/actions that aren't in the registry.
Fix: Use one of the 4 example prompts in the modal as a template. Be specific about WHEN, WHO (filter), and WHAT (action).
Agent runs but does 0 actions
The query returned 0 matches. Either the conditions are too narrow, or there genuinely aren't any matching contacts right now.
Fix: Open the agent detail page > Compiled plan section. Verify the conditions match what you intended. Loosen the filter and re-run.
"Agent is not active" error on a scheduled run
You paused the agent but the scheduler fired anyway (rare race condition). The run is short-circuited with no DB write.
Fix: No fix needed — it's by design. The repeatable job still exists; the next tick will be skipped too until you reactivate.

Error messages

  • Invalid cron expression — Your custom cron isn't valid 5-field format (minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week). Use the preset picker or test with crontab.guru.
  • No valid actions in compiled plan — The model returned actions that all failed validation (unknown action type, or filtered by allowedActions). Rephrase the description to use clearer action verbs ("send email", "create task", etc.).

Plans

Included in every plan. Each create / update is one heavy-tier model call (compiles the description); each scheduled run executes the compiled plan (cost scales with maxActionsPerRun + how many of those actions are AI-powered — send_email with AI draft costs more than create_task). Toggleable per-org under Settings > AI Usage > AI Features (key: ai_agents).

Related

  • AI Actions & Approvals (when requireApproval=true, agent actions queue here)
  • AI Chat Agent (Website Widget) (different feature — that one chats with visitors; this one acts on your CRM)
  • Workflows (visual builder, more flexible but requires more setup; agents are the "tell it in English" version)
  • Languages & Translation — how starter templates auto-localize and the org primary language drives every AI surface

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