Three jobs an in-product agent does well
The best in-product agents are scoped to specific jobs rather than a do-everything chatbot. The three that pay off most often are guided onboarding, in-context support, and letting power users act by describing what they want.
Each of these reduces a real friction point: new users who stall, support tickets that repeat, and advanced actions buried three menus deep.
- Onboarding: walks new users through setup using their actual account state
- Support: answers from your docs and knows the page the user is on
- Actions: 'create a report for last quarter and share it with Dana' — done through your existing API
- Explains errors and dead-ends in plain language
- Suggests the next useful step instead of leaving a blank screen
Doing it safely inside your product
An agent that can take actions has to respect the same permissions and limits as your UI. We wire it to your existing API and auth so it can only do what the logged-in user could already do — nothing more.
Consequential actions get confirmation steps, and everything the agent does is logged. The goal is a helpful assistant that can never become a security hole or a surprise.
- Runs under the user's own permissions, never a superuser bypass
- Confirmation step before anything destructive or billable
- Action logs so you can audit what was done and why
- Rate limits and cost controls per account
- Graceful fallback to human support when it isn't confident
More on custom ai agents
Frequently asked questions
Will this integrate with our existing app or require a rebuild?
It integrates. We connect the agent to your current API and auth so it lives alongside what you have. No rebuild — we start with one workflow and expand from there.
How do we keep it from taking wrong or costly actions?
By constraining it: it acts only through your API within the user's permissions, asks for confirmation on consequential steps, and logs everything. It also abstains when unsure instead of guessing at an action.
What does it cost to run per user?
There are two parts — the one-time build and the ongoing model usage, which scales with how much your users chat. We help you set per-account limits so costs stay predictable. Book a consultation and we'll estimate against your usage patterns.