Hiring & customizing agents
A team's roster isn't fixed. You can hire new agents, retire ones you don't need, and tune how each agent behaves - both from the web app and by asking the CEO.
Hiring a new agent
There are two ways a hire gets started: you fill in the hire screen directly, or you tell the CEO you need a new role and let the team draft it for you. In the second case the CEO writes the full role spec and files it as a hire proposal (or directs the team's Captain to) - so the agents do the drafting work, and the proposal lands in your inbox ready to review. Either way you stay in control: a hire always surfaces as an approval, and you can modify the proposed role, system prompt, budget, heartbeat, and code access before approving it. Nothing is added to the roster without your sign-off.
When you hire an agent you set:
- Role - its title and a short description of what it's responsible for.
- Reports to - the manager this agent answers to. This sets the reporting line in the org chart, which is what lets work be delegated to and from the agent, so it's worth getting right (it defaults to the Captain). You can change it later from the agent's settings, and the Captain/CEO can also adjust reporting lines during a coherence review.
- System prompt - the instructions that define how it works. Variable chips let you
insert substitution variables (e.g.
{{team_name}},{{reports_to}},{{skills_context}}) that are filled with live team and project context on every run, so the prompt stays in sync as things change. Hover a chip (tap on mobile) to see what each one means. A handful of variables are required and must stay in the prompt for it to be accepted - the editor marks them and flags any that are missing. - Model - which provider/model it runs on (defaults to the team's model; override per agent if you want).
- Heartbeat - how often it wakes to look for work. The agent's page shows a live countdown to its next heartbeat (hidden while the agent is disabled or paused).
- Budget - optional spending limits (see Budgets & cost control).
- Code access - whether the agent works in the project's code workspace.
Once approved, the agent is onboarded into the team and starts picking up work on its heartbeat.
Editing system prompts
Every agent's system prompt is editable from its settings at any time. Changes take effect on the agent's next run, so you can correct course - tighten scope, add a convention, change tone - without rebuilding anything. The required substitution variables must remain in the prompt; an edit that drops one is rejected so an agent never loses its identity or live context. (The global CEO and Coach are exempt - they have no manager.)
Per-agent model override
By default the agents on a team share the team's model. You can override the model for any individual agent, so (for example) one agent runs on a frontier model for hard reasoning while the rest run on something cheaper and faster. Mixing providers within a single team is fully supported. See AI model support.
Retiring & reinstating agents
When a team no longer needs a role, you can retire (disable) the agent - from its settings in the web app, or just by asking the CEO. Retiring stops the agent from being scheduled and unassigns it from any open tasks, but keeps all of its history, so it's fully reversible: reinstate (enable) it at any time and it picks work back up on its heartbeat. The CEO actions this directly once you confirm, which is handy after a project's direction changes and several roles no longer fit. (A team's Captain can't be retired by the CEO - only an admin can, from the web app. The global CEO and Coach run coordination and review across every project, so they're essential and can't be retired at all.)
Other settings
You can also adjust an agent's heartbeat interval and budgets over time, and pause or resume agents when you need to. Standing preferences you give the CEO in chat are remembered and applied going forward.