Agent Builder
Agent Builder is where an agent is created and everything about it is tuned. Every setting that changes how an agent behaves lives here, grouped into four sections.
When to use it
Section titled “When to use it”Open Agent Builder when you want to change what an agent is, rather than ask it to do something. Creating an agent, rewriting its prompt, giving it a connector, turning a capability off, checking what it remembered — all of that happens here. Day-to-day work happens in a conversation instead.
Create an agent
Section titled “Create an agent”-
Start a new agent.
From your agent list, choose to create a new agent. You are asked for a name and a handle. The handle is short and stable — it is how you address the agent later.
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Say what it is for, in one sentence.
Be specific. “Summarizes my unread email each morning and flags anything that needs a reply” produces a far better agent than “email assistant”. This sentence is the seed of the system prompt.
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Open Agent Builder and work down the sections.
A new agent can already reason, calculate, and read public web pages. Everything else you add deliberately.
The four sections
Section titled “The four sections”Agent Builder is organized by what part of the agent you are changing.
| Section | Contains | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | Profile, prompt, memory | Identity and profile · System prompt · Memory |
| Ability | Skills, connectors, built-in tools | Skills · Connectors · Built-in tools |
| Pairing | Channels, devices | Channels |
| Inventory | Workspaces, artifacts | Artifacts |
The split is worth internalizing: Identity is who the agent is, Ability is what it can reach, Pairing is where it can be reached from, and Inventory is what it has produced.
The anatomy of an agent
Section titled “The anatomy of an agent”Three things determine how an agent behaves, in roughly this order of impact:
Its system prompt. The standing instructions it reads before every conversation. This is the single biggest lever, and the one most people under-use. See System prompt and revisions.
What is bound to it. An agent can only use the skills and connections you bind to it. Binding is per agent, not per account — connecting Gmail once does not hand your inbox to every agent you own.
Its model. Which model runs the loop, and how much reasoning effort it spends. See Choosing a model.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”- An agent’s handle is chosen at creation and is not meant to change afterwards.
- Changes to an agent apply to its next run. A run already in flight keeps the configuration it started with — including the prompt revision, the model, and the bound tools.
- Agent Builder configures a single agent. There is no bulk edit across agents.
- Deleting an agent does not delete the artifacts it produced.