How It Works
This page explains what happens under the hood when your agent receives a task and responds — so you understand why it behaves the way it does and how to get the best results.
The agent lifecycle
Section titled “The agent lifecycle”Every interaction with an agent follows this lifecycle:
- Receives your message — from the console, your app, a flow trigger, or a deployed channel
- Plans — decides what information it needs and what steps to take
- Searches its knowledge — if you’ve connected one, it retrieves relevant context
- Uses tools — takes real actions: reads from GitHub, sends a Slack message, queries a database
- Reasons and responds — synthesizes everything into a clear, grounded answer or output
- Streams back to you — you see the response as it’s generated, not after a long wait
Execution modes
Section titled “Execution modes”Auteryn runs each task in Auto, Fast, or Deep mode:
| Mode | Best for | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Auto | Internal agents — SmartRouter picks Fast or Deep per task | Varies |
| Fast | Quick questions, lookups, chat, customer-facing agents | Seconds |
| Deep | Complex reasoning, multi-step tasks, research, code generation | Minutes (up to ~2 hours per run) |
- Customer-facing agents always use Fast mode
- Internal agents default to Auto (SmartRouter chooses Fast or Deep)
- You can override to Fast or Deep in Agent → Settings → Execution Mode
Choosing a model provider
Section titled “Choosing a model provider”Auteryn isn’t locked to a single AI vendor. When you create an agent, you choose which model provider powers it:
| Provider | Good for |
|---|---|
| Gemini | A strong, well-rounded default — fast, capable, great value across most tasks |
| Claude | Careful reasoning, coding, and following nuanced instructions |
| GPT | Broad general-purpose capability across writing and analysis |
| Forge Select | An Auteryn-managed option optimized for speed and cost |
Every provider works with the same capabilities, integrations, knowledge, and skills — switching providers doesn’t change what your agent can do, only the underlying model that reasons about it. Each provider automatically uses a lighter or more powerful model depending on whether the task runs in Fast or Deep mode.
How the agent uses tools
Section titled “How the agent uses tools”When the agent needs to take an action, it calls a tool. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Example task: “Review the open PRs in our repo and flag anything that’s been waiting more than 3 days.”
- Agent calls the GitHub tool → fetches open pull requests
- Agent filters PRs older than 3 days
- Agent calls the Slack tool → posts a summary to the designated channel
- Agent returns a response confirming what it did
Each tool call is logged and visible in the Run History tab on your agent page — so you always know exactly what the agent did.
How knowledge retrieval works
Section titled “How knowledge retrieval works”When your agent has a knowledge, it doesn’t load all the documents every time. Instead:
- Your message is converted into a semantic search query
- The most relevant chunks are retrieved from your knowledge
- Those chunks are injected into the agent’s context before it responds
- The agent answers based on your content — citing the source document
This means the agent only “sees” what’s relevant to the current task — you can have very large knowledge collections without performance issues.
How computer use works
Section titled “How computer use works”When you enable the Browser capability, your agent can use browser automation and Computer Use (vision-based UI control) inside an isolated sandbox:
- Agent acquires or reuses a sandbox session (one per agent in your org)
- Navigates to the target website
- Takes a screenshot and identifies UI elements
- Clicks, types, scrolls, or extracts data via Computer Use when needed
- Reports back with results and optionally a screenshot
The browser runs in a completely isolated container. It cannot access your local machine. See Computer Use → for setup and use cases.
Real-time streaming
Section titled “Real-time streaming”All agent responses are streamed in real time — you see the agent’s thinking and actions as they happen, not a single response after a long wait. This is especially useful for long-running tasks where you want to monitor progress.
In the Test panel, responses stream word by word. Tool calls appear inline as they happen.
The /api/run endpoint returns AG-UI SSE events. Common types include TEXT_MESSAGE_CONTENT (streaming text), TOOL_CALL_START / TOOL_CALL_RESULT, and RUN_FINISHED.
The chat bubble renders streaming responses out of the box — no configuration needed.

