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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:
From the agentIn the chat
InstructionsThe agent approaches your questions with its brief in mind.
ScopeIt focuses on the providers, zones, or contracts you scoped it to.
Skills, tools, and knowledgeThe same capabilities and reference material its runs use.
Execution modeWhether it can make changes from the chat — see below.
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

The agent’s execution mode carries into the conversation:
  • Report only — the chat is advisory. The agent investigates, answers, and tells you what it would do, but it can’t make changes from the conversation — no matter how the request is phrased. If you want the agent acting, update its execution mode and start a new chat, or ask the main Nash assistant to make the change.
  • Auto-execute — the agent can carry out actions during the conversation, and sensitive actions pause for your approval first, exactly as in any Nash Agent chat. See Guardrails & confirmations.
The mode is a property of the agent, enforced on every turn — you can’t loosen it from inside a conversation.

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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.
The conversation follows the agent’s saved configuration. To change what the agent does — its instructions, scope, or execution mode — edit the agent itself.

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 and execution

Run an agent on a schedule, on an alert, or on a file upload.

Knowledge

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