Creating Agents in Formulate

Create an agent that can act as an "autonomous entity," making decisions and performing tasks to achieve specific goals on behalf of your business. Agents operate as if they are a user (with a persona and a set of instructions), and call on MCP services and local information to extend their capabilities. You can use your agent to automate repetitive work, so that you can refocus on high value tasks.

It's important to note that this process creates a standalone Agent, which can be shared, secured, and used in Decision Flows. Once your agent is created, you will be able to select it using the Bot Wizard in either Discover or Tabulate.

Note: This feature requires specific licensing options.

Building Agents

Before you begin

  • You can only create Agents where an LLM Provider has been enabled for you. For more information, see AI Settings.

Creating a New Agent

In Formulate's New Formulation page:

  1. Select Agent from the available Formulation type options.

    2. An empty Agent builder opens:

  2. Optionally, choose a template from the Marketplace to get started (blue arrow above).

    3. The Agent Marketplace includes many templates that you can use to populate your Agent details in the first instance. If you click Download that selects one of the built-in templates and populates values across the tabs. You can edit any of these values with your own content as per your requirements.

  3. From the Instructions tab, specify the instructions for your Agent.

    4. Agent instructions tell the agent how to behave and respond, defining both the agent's persona (what it is like) and its instructions (what it is supposed to do). See below for more details.

  4. From the Tools tab, select the MCP tools or services that you want your Agent to use.

    5. MCP tools offer some external capability to the agent. You can fetch data from the real-world or make use of external services. When you add an MCP tool, you are extending the agent's capabilities with services that are specific to your requirements. See below for more details.

  5. From the References tab, upload any documents that you want the agent to be aware of.

    6. References are documents (images, PDFs, spreadsheets, and so on) that the agent can use. When you add a referenced document, you are typically providing the agent with some specific domain or company information. See below for more details.

  6. From the Settings tab, define the metadata for your Agent.

    7. This is the same Metadata as is defined for most content items including an Icon, a Description, and the Content tags. See below for more details.

  7. Click Save and navigate to a store location.

Once your changes are saved, the Agent is created in the content manager.

What next?

Like any other item type, you can access and share the Agent in the content manager, open the Agent in its app (Formulate) for editing, set its Security details, copy it to shared or local folders, and so on.

If you want to make use of the Agent, you will need to either:

  • Use the Bot Wizard to select this Agent and embed it in a Decision Flow automatically. This action can be run using the Bot Wizard in either Discover or Tabulate.
  • Create a Decision Flow in Model and add your Agent to it.

Agent Builder

Instructions Tab

Agent instructions tell the agent how to behave and respond, defining both the agent's persona (what it is like) and its instructions (what it is supposed to do). You can specify the following details:

  • Name: The name of the Agent. This name will be used for both the Agent object and its Model (the Decision Flow that contains the agent) when they are created.
  • Persona: The character that we want the Agent to assume when it is fulfilling its instructions. This describes a simple, fictional user profile or job description that represents a typical target user's goals, behaviors, and needs.
  • Instructions: This is the most important information for the Agent. It describes what the Agent needs to do; what it needs to look at, how to analyze that content, and what it needs to return. You should consider using lists or keeping your instructions in sequence to make sure that you cover everything. Also, be aware that if you use Tools or References, it might be a good idea to indicate how and when to use their content here.

Tools Tab

Open the Tools Selector

How you open the Tools Selector depends on whether you have any Tools Selected:

  • If there are no tools selected, click Click here to start adding tools in the middle of the page.
  • Otherwise, click Add Tools at the top-right.

Select MCP Tools

MCP tools offer some external capability to the agent. You can fetch data from the real-world or make use of external services. When you add an MCP tool, you are extending the agent's capabilities with services that are specific to your requirements.

You can select MCP Services or Tools as follows:

  • Click the Plus (+) icon (blue arrow above) to select the Tool you want to add.
  • Click the Minus (–) icon (purple arrow) to remove a selection.

Tip: If you want to remove all currently selected MCP tools, you can always click Clear All.

Note: It's important to note that the agent may try to make use of any selected tool, even if it is not explicitly mentioned in the Instructions.

Selected Tools

Once you have selected all the Tools that you want to make use of, click Selected Tools from the top-left of the page to return to the previous page.

References Tab

References are documents (images, PDFs, spreadsheets, and so on) that the agent can use. When you add a referenced document, you are typically providing the agent with some specific domain or company information. You can manage the reference files as follows:

Add Reference Files

  • Drag the file from its folder location and drop it onto the target.
  • Click the target to access the Open dialog, where you can navigate to the file's folder location and select the file.

Remove Reference Files

  • Click Remove (X) to delete a single reference file.
  • Click Clear All to remove all reference files.

Tip: If you want to remove all currently selected reference files, you can always click Clear All.

Note: It's important to note that the agent may try to make use of any selected reference file, even if it is not explicitly mentioned in the Instructions.

Settings Tab

The Settings tab is used to set up the Metadata for the new Agent:

  • Icon: Use this widget to upload an image to assign as the item's thumbnail when viewed in the CMS. The options allow you to upload or remove images.
  • Description: Optionally, provide a description to help your team quickly understand the purpose of the item and any relevant details in the future. This is central to building out a data catalog of data and analytic assets inside Pyramid.
  • Tags: Use this multi-select dropdown list to tag this content item. Content tags help when trying to search and categorize content.

Pyramid Marketplace

Use the Pyramid Marketplace dialog to populate your form with data from built-in Agent templates that are included out of the box with the product deployment.

Each template in the Marketplace typically has a name, description, and some tags (orange highlight above). The available options are as follows:

  • Download: Click Download (purple arrow) to close the marketplace and populate the builder with the data from your selected template.
  • Tags Search... Select one or more tags from the dropdown list (yellow arrow) to show only the templates that include those tags. Note: The tags associated with each template are shown beneath the template name and description (blue arrow).
  • Search: Type a search term to search using a contains filter across tags, title, and description.