Cortex · Chat

Create an agent

Create your own chat agent from the Cortex sidebar, and talk to it in a conversation of its own.

You can create a chat agent of your own without leaving Cortex. Describe what it is for and how it should behave, and Cortex creates the agent and opens a conversation with it under Agents in your sidebar.

Create the agent

In the sidebar, select + next to Agents.
Fill in the three fields:

Field	What it does	Limit
Name	What the agent is called in your sidebar and in its conversation. It must contain at least one letter or digit.	64 characters
Goal	What the agent is for, in a sentence.	280 characters
Instructions	How the agent should behave: its tone, what to focus on, what to avoid.	8,000 characters

Select Create agent.

Every field is required. Spaces before and after what you type are ignored, and Create agent stays blocked while a field is empty or over its limit.

To start a conversation with a colleague instead, use + next to People.

What the agent starts with

Your organization's default model. The agent answers with the model your administrator set as the default.
No tools yet. The agent can only answer from the conversation. To let it search, read or act on your systems, open Agentic and add tools to the agent there. The dialog has an Open Agentic link for this; it opens in a new tab.

The agent is created in your personal workspace, so it works for you.

Where the conversation appears

Once the agent is ready, its conversation opens and stays listed under Agents in your sidebar, below your own Cortex chat. It can take a moment to be ready, and Cortex tells you it is setting the conversation up. Cortex waits for it for a short while and opens it when it is ready. If it does not open, find the conversation under Agents once it appears.

If the agent cannot be created

If the service is briefly unavailable, Cortex tries again a few times on its own. What you typed stays in the dialog whenever something goes wrong, so you can correct it and try again. Changing the name, goal or instructions sends a new request, so you can rename the agent after a refusal. Selecting Create agent again without changing anything repeats the same request.

Message	What it means	What to do
An agent with this name already exists.	The name is already in use.	Choose another name.
You need a personal workspace to create an agent.	Agents are created in your personal workspace, and you do not have one.	Ask your administrator.
You are not allowed to create agents.	Your permissions do not allow you to create agents.	Ask your administrator.
This request was already used for a different agent.	An earlier request was already used for a different agent. This is rare, because editing the draft sends a new request.	Close the dialog, open it again and create the agent.
Agents cannot be created right now.	The service is still unavailable after Cortex tried again.	Select Create agent again in a moment. Cortex finishes the same agent rather than creating a second one.
Something went wrong.	The request failed for another reason.	Try again.

Up nextMoving chats to the Matrix workspaceWhat happens to existing Cortex conversations when your organization moves to the Matrix workspace, and how the move can be undone.