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Custom agents usually work on their own — a schedule fires, the agent runs, a report lands. You can also talk to one directly. A chat with a custom agent is a live conversation with the specialist you briefed: it follows the agent’s instructions, focuses on the agent’s data scope, and respects what the agent is allowed to do.

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When to use this

  • Ask an agent about itself. “What do you watch?”, “When do you run?”, “What are you allowed to change?” — the agent answers from its live configuration, not a guess.
  • Dig into the agent’s territory. Investigate a late delivery or a provider trend with the agent’s playbook and scope already applied, instead of re-briefing the main assistant from scratch.
  • Follow up on a run. A scheduled report flagged something; ask the specialist behind it what to make of the finding.
  • Try out a new brief. Before you put an agent on a schedule, chat with it to see how it interprets its instructions.
For a one-off question outside any agent’s territory, just talk to the main Nash assistant — a scoped agent focuses on its own slice of your operation.

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Start a chat

There are two ways in, and both bind the conversation to the agent from the first message:
  • From the agent’s page. Open the agent under Agents and select New chat. The new conversation is labeled with the agent’s name so you always know who you’re talking to.
  • Mention it in the message box. Type @ where you’d normally write to Nash, pick the agent, and send. That message starts a new conversation bound to the agent.
A conversation keeps the binding it started with. Mentioning an agent in the middle of an existing thread doesn’t hand the conversation over — start a new chat to switch specialists.

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What carries over from the agent

Everything you configured on the agent shapes the conversation: The agent can also describe its own setup accurately — its purpose, scope, schedules and triggers, and what it’s permitted to do — so “what would you do if a delivery goes late?” gets an answer grounded in how the agent is actually configured.

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Whether the agent can act

A chat with a custom agent runs in a session mode, the same as any Nash Agent chat. Pick it from the mode control in the message box:
  • Interactive — the agent can carry out actions during the conversation, and sensitive actions pause for your approval first. See Guardrails & confirmations.
  • Plan — actions the agent would take are captured as a plan for you to approve, rather than run.
  • Read-only — the agent uses read tools only; every write is blocked.
The agent’s own execution mode — report only or auto-execute — governs its scheduled and triggered runs, not the chat. An agent that runs report-only can still act in a conversation, with the same approvals as any other chat. To keep a conversation advisory, set it to Read-only.

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FAQ

No. A chat is a conversation you own, saved in your chat history like any other. Scheduled and triggered runs are separate — talking to an agent doesn’t consume a run or fire its schedule.
Anyone who can chat with Nash. You don’t need permission to manage agents — managing and chatting are separate; see who can create and manage custom agents.
Some of it. If you can manage agents, ask in the chat — “send this to the ops channel too,” “run it at 7 instead” — and Nash updates the agent’s instructions, schedule, recipients, or skills for you. Ask it to add or remove a skill, or to put the agent back on the default set. Scope and execution mode are changed in the agent’s own settings.

Custom agents

What a custom agent is, and how to set one up for a recurring job.

Guardrails & confirmations

How Nash decides which actions run automatically and which wait for your approval.

Scheduling & execution

Run an agent on a schedule or in response to an alert.

Knowledge

Ground your agents with SOPs, policies, and reference links.