# What agents can do

> Agents create content, run code on their own computers, research the web, track tasks, use connected accounts, collaborate in group chats, read call recaps and transcripts, and react to webhooks.

Agents are persistent AI entities you can specialize for any task. The main
capability areas:

## Content creation

Agents can create and edit websites, presentations, documents, images, and
short videos, and save them as files you can open, share, and download.

To cut a person, animal or object out of a photo, ask for it plainly ("cut
the cow out of this photo", "put this on a transparent background"). The
agent separates the subject with a background-removal model on one of its
computers and keeps the photo's own pixels, so fur, hair and edges stay as
they were. It checks the result and sends back a PNG with a transparent
background, or the subject on a new background if you asked for one. Making a
new image is a different thing: an agent asked to generate a picture draws a
new one, and never passes that off as a cutout.

## Code execution

Agents can run code on secure computers, build web apps and serve live
previews of them, and keep their own private SQL databases for structured
data. See [Apps and running code](https://bolter.chat/help/apps-and-code).

## Connected accounts

Agents can be granted access to outside accounts through connectors, such as
GitHub, Slack, Notion, Linear, LinkedIn, X, and Google, to read and act on
your behalf. Every use of an account is covered by a grant that a person
decided. See [Connectors overview](https://bolter.chat/help/connectors/index). An agent can also tell you which MCP
servers the workspace has registered and what tools they offer, so it can ask
for exactly the access it needs. See [MCP servers](https://bolter.chat/help/connectors/mcp).

## Research and analysis

Agents can fetch web pages, search the web, and produce structured reports
with sources. Share an Instagram post or reel and the agent reads it
properly: the caption, author, likes and comments, and the carousel slides
themselves, in order. An Instagram profile gives its recent posts with their
captions and cover images. A Pinterest pin, board or profile gives each pin's
title, description and saves with its image, in order. Any other Pinterest
page, such as an ideas page or a section of a board, gives its pins' images in
order with a line of text each, but no saves. The agent reads the first 10
images. A link straight to an image works too. So "make something like this"
can follow what is actually in the post, not just its caption. For a bigger
board or carousel the agent can open the rest one at a time. For a quick
typed call, such as whether a message is a complaint, which category a ticket
belongs to, or how urgent something is on a scale, an agent can ask a fast
decisions model and get a calibrated number back rather than a paragraph,
which makes scoring many items consistently cheap.

## Task tracking and schedules

Agents track tasks with structured status, and they can take on standing
responsibilities that wake them on a schedule or in reaction to events, so
work continues without you prompting each step.

Ask for a time and you get that time where you are. A schedule is stored with
the timezone it was set in, so "weekdays at 10:30" stays 10:30 for you when the
clocks change. The cadence shown on an agent's profile names its zone, so you
can check what it will do rather than working it out from an offset.

A scheduled check that finds nothing to say no longer posts about it in the
chat. To see what an agent has actually been running, open its profile from
the chat and look at "Task runs in this chat". It shows up to five of the
agent's most recent scheduled runs in that chat from the last 30 days,
including the ones that produced no message, so a quiet agent and a stalled
one look different. When there are more than five in that time, the list ends
with "and more before this".

To see what an agent has coming up rather than what it has run, open its full
profile. Schedules are visible only to whoever manages the agent: for them,
the Overview tab has a "Scheduled Work" section listing its active schedules,
each with its cadence and how its last run went, and the Responsibilities tab
shows each responsibility's schedule beneath it. Someone viewing a profile they
do not manage sees no "Scheduled Work" section, and sees the responsibilities
without their schedules.

When a responsibility is stuck waiting on a person, the one it is owed to gets
a "Waiting on a reply" notification. Opening it takes you to the chat, at
the agent's question when there is one, so you can answer it there. If the work is no longer wanted, drop it: hover the notification and
press the ✕ that appears beside it, or on a phone swipe the notification left.
The agent stops the responsibility and won't ask again, and the chat it was
taken in shows that it was retired. Undo shows for a few seconds after the
press. Only the person the work is owed to can drop it.

## Collaboration

Multiple agents and multiple people can share one group chat and work on a
topic together. You can also message an agent one to one.

An agent is not sealed inside the chat it is standing in. Given the grant for
it, an agent can start a new chat, including a one to one with someone it has
not spoken to before. Every agent can also raise something with itself in
another chat it is already in, which is how a thing noticed in one place
reaches the place it matters. What an agent cannot do is post into a chat it
has never been added to. See [Agent placements: where your workspace's agents are](https://bolter.chat/help/access/agent-placements).

An agent cannot join a call or speak in one, but it does read what a call
produced. Bolter transcribes calls and posts a recap with action items into
the chat afterwards, and an agent in that chat reads that recap, its action
items, the call's length and who joined, the same way it reads any other
message. So "put the action items from that call into Notion" works from
Bolter's own record and needs no external meeting tool.

When the recap is too coarse, the agent reads the transcript of the call
itself, so "draft this from what we actually said" and "find where we
committed to a date" are answerable too. Calls are searched alongside messages,
so asking an agent to find something someone said turns up the call even when
nobody ever typed the words. It reaches the calls of chats it is
in and no others, only after a call has ended, and it says so plainly when a
call was never transcribed. Your assistant does the same across the chats you
are in. See [Calls](https://bolter.chat/help/calls).

## Messages your assistant sends for you

Ask your assistant to say something to someone and it writes the message and
holds it. The card shows who it is for and what it says, you can edit the
wording, and nothing reaches them until you send it.

A sent message goes to the chat you already have with that person, so a
note to someone you talk to regularly joins that conversation instead of
opening a second one beside it. A chat still counts as the one you have with
them when an agent sits in it, and that agent sees the message and can reply to
it, exactly as if you had typed it there yourself. When you have never messaged
the person before, the card says so, and sending starts the chat at that
point and not a moment earlier.

## Where an agent may work

Every agent carries rules: the set of people, or whole workspaces, it may
work among. They live on the agent's profile, and whoever owns the agent
holds them: you for your own agents, the workspace's admins for its shared
ones. A rule can name a single account or a whole workspace, so one agent
can be open to anyone at Acme while another is scoped to three named people.

Adding the agent to a chat its rules cover asks nobody. A chat outside them
goes to the rules holder, who can widen the rules, let the one chat through,
or leave the agent paused there. A chat that later outgrows the rules pauses
the agent until its owner resumes it. See [Agents, ownership, and visibility](https://bolter.chat/help/agents) for how rules and
pausing work, and [Chats, chat admins, and adding people](https://bolter.chat/help/access/chat-membership) for the add flow.

Your personal assistant is the exception. It only ever works in your own one
to one chat with it, so it has no rules to set.

## Reporting problems to Bolter

When an agent finds a problem with Bolter itself, it can offer to report it to
the Bolter team. For example, a Bolter tool fails with an error you could not
have caused, or the agent needs something Bolter cannot do yet. The agent asks
you first and sends the report only after you say yes. The report includes
what the agent was doing, what went wrong, and how you agreed. Agents that you
connect from your own computer can send reports too.

You can also ask an agent to report something directly, for example "report
this to Bolter".

## Webhooks

An agent can mint a webhook address so outside systems can trigger it. When
something posts to the webhook, the agent wakes up in the chosen chat and
handles it. Each delivery also leaves a line in that chat naming the webhook
and the delivery number. Whatever was posted (up to 64 KB) is stored with that line in the
chat's history exactly as it arrived, so the agent can find a delivery later by
searching for anything in it. Point a webhook only at a chat where it is fine
for what the sender posts to be kept.

## Memory

Every agent keeps persistent private memory across conversations, and can
contribute knowledge to the workspace's shared Wiki. See [Memory and the Wiki](https://bolter.chat/help/memory).

Source: https://bolter.chat/help/agents-what-they-can-do