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How to build an agent team by describing it to AI Builder

Learn how to describe an agent team in chat and have AI Builder create and change its steps.

Srivatsa MarthiSrivatsa MarthiPrincipal Product Manager

Learn how to describe an agent team in chat and have AI Builder create and change its steps.

Overview

AI Builder is the chat in Agent Teams that turns a plain-English description into an agent team. It creates the team, adds and changes its steps, and tells you what it changed after each request. Everything it builds is saved to your Agent Teams list as it goes.

Building and editing never send a message, post to Slack or write to your CRM. Steps only do that when the team runs. A new team has no trigger, so it cannot start on its own. You can run it by hand at any time (see How to run an agent team from AI Builder).

Before you start

  • Open AI Builder with Create with AI in the New agent team dialog, or with Build with AI (the sparkle button in the bottom-right corner). If neither is available, your organization does not have AI Builder turned on. Contact your ZoomInfo admin. See How to open AI Builder from the Build with AI button in Agent Teams.
  • Whether you can create or edit agent teams depends on your role. If the builder tells you it was refused, ask your ZoomInfo admin. See Overview of permissions in GTM One.
  • AI Builder uses your name, title and what your company sells to word steps. It does not need any setup for that.

Build a new agent team

  1. Open AI Builder and click a suggested prompt, or describe the team in the message box and send it. Name each step in order and say what the team should produce at the end.
  2. Read the one-line plan AI Builder replies with (e.g., "1) research the target accounts, 2) email the top ones"). It builds in the same reply and does not wait for a yes.
  3. Answer any question it asks. It asks only what it needs: an email address or Slack channel for a message step, a timezone for a schedule, or which team to call from a step.
  4. Read the summary. It names the team by its id and lists the current steps in order.
  5. To change something, say what to change, e.g., "drop step 3" or "make that a Slack message instead". AI Builder makes one focused change per request unless you ask for several.

If the Agent Teams canvas is open beside the chat, it refreshes after each reply. Otherwise AI Builder ends its reply with a link to open the team in Agent Teams.

What AI Builder can add

  • AI agent steps. You give a one-sentence goal, up to 500 characters, and AI Builder writes the detailed instructions. A longer goal is a sign to split the work into two steps.
  • Slack message steps. It needs a channel or a person you name. It posts as the ZoomInfo bot unless you ask for the message to come from your own Slack account.
  • Email steps. It needs the recipient address and never guesses one. The email step can wait for a response and decide how to react to it.
  • Wait steps. The wait can be seconds, minutes, hours or days. "Over the weekend" is ambiguous, so it asks you.
  • Document steps. It picks Word, PDF, Excel or CSV from your wording (e.g., "report" or "spreadsheet") and can set a template or column names.
  • Human review steps. It sets the approver's email and what they are reviewing.
  • Run inputs. Values you type each time you run the team (e.g., a company name). Later steps refer to them, so the team does not hard-code the value.
  • Loops. "For each" a row in a list that a step produced during the run. A loop starts from one step's list; an Audience or CSV a run starts over already gives each run one record.
  • Branches. "If X, do A, otherwise B." The last path is always named Default, with the condition "If no conditions match".
  • A step that runs another team. AI Builder looks the team up by name in the teams you can access and never guesses. By default the first team waits for the second to finish; say "don't wait" to let it carry on.

Steps that use another step's result are linked to that step. Action steps other than a wait need a data source: another step's result, a run input, or all of the run's inputs.

Tools, connections and Business Context

  • AI Builder attaches the tools that fit each step. When a tool needs an app you have not connected (e.g., your CRM), the reply names the app and links to where you connect it. The team can still be saved and turned on, but those steps will not run until the app is connected.
  • When you name an app, AI Builder attaches it even if it is not connected yet and tells you so. It does not swap in a different app.
  • For outreach, research or competitive teams, it can switch on parts of your Business Context for the team's agents: your company description, elevator pitch, strategic priorities, and chosen products, personas, ideal customer profiles and competitors. The reply names what the team will now draw on, and you can ask to add or remove any of it. Each kind takes up to 10 records, and all of it together is limited to about 12,000 characters. It skips records that do not match your request, such as a competitor you named that has no record.

Limits and what it will not do

  • An agent team can have up to 200 steps.
  • Loops and branches sit at the top level of a team. They cannot be placed inside another loop or branch. To do "for each account, if X then A else B", use a loop for the per-account work and a branch after it.
  • A team cannot call itself.
  • Every step runs on the platform's default model. AI Builder cannot change a step's model, and it will say so while still applying the other changes in your request.
  • AI Builder works only with agent teams you can access. If it cannot find the team you mean, it asks which one.

If you see an error

  • "Unable to open AI Builder" followed by "Please try again in a moment." The chat could not start. Wait a moment and open it again.

If AI Builder says a change was not made, see Troubleshooting AI Builder for agent teams.

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