The conversation around AI is shifting. We're moving beyond simple chatbots and into the era of the autonomous AI agent—a true digital worker capable of understanding goals, orchestrating complex tasks, and operating independently to drive business outcomes.
But what separates a powerful, effective digital worker from a simple script? It's not just a clever prompt. A robust AI agent has a distinct anatomy, a set of core components that define its purpose, capabilities, and interactions.
At Agents.do, we believe in a developer-first, "Business-as-Code" approach to building these agents. Let's break down the essential anatomy of a digital worker, using the Agents.do framework as our guide.
Imagine you're building a new team member from scratch. You wouldn't just tell them "do work." You'd give them a name, a job title, a clear objective, and the tools they need to succeed. Building an AI agent is no different.
Here’s how you can define a complete agent using the Agents.do SDK:
import { Agent } from 'agents.do'
// Create a customer support agent
const customerSupportAgent = Agent({
name: 'Amy',
role: 'Customer Support Agent',
objective: 'Handles customer inquiries and resolves common issues',
keyResults: ['responseTime', 'resolutionTime', 'escalationRate', 'customerSatisfaction'],
url: 'https://amy.do',
integrations: ['chat', 'slack', 'email', 'zendesk', 'shopify'],
triggers: ['onTicketCreated', 'onMessageReceived'],
searches: ['FAQs', 'Tickets', 'Orders', 'Products', 'Customers'],
actions: ['sendMessage', 'updateOrder', 'refundOrder', 'resolveTicket', 'escalateTicket'],
})
This code isn't just a configuration file; it's the DNA of your digital worker. Let's dissect each part.
Just like a human employee, a digital worker needs an identity. Defining a name and role isn't just for show; it provides essential context for both the AI model and your team. This context helps the agent understand its persona and boundaries. For your team, it clarifies who is performing which automated tasks, making the AI workforce understandable and manageable.
This is the most critical component. The objective is the agent's North Star—its reason for existing. A well-defined objective moves the agent from being a passive tool to a proactive worker. It answers the question, "What is my primary goal?" Without a clear objective, an agent's actions are meaningless. With one, it can make independent decisions to achieve its end goal.
How do you know if your agent is performing well? An enterprise-grade agent can't be a black box. Defining keyResults turns your agent into an accountable digital worker. The Agents.do platform uses these to provide observability into performance. You can track metrics like ticket resolution time or customer satisfaction, proving the ROI of your AI workforce and identifying areas for improvement.
An autonomous agent is useless if it's trapped in a silo. To perform meaningful work, it must connect to the same tools your human team uses. The integrations define the agent's toolkit. Our support agent, Amy, can access Zendesk to manage tickets, Shopify to check order details, and Slack to communicate with the team. This is the foundation of agent orchestration—enabling a single agent to work across multiple platforms seamlessly.
How does an agent know when to act? Triggers are the senses of your digital worker. They are the events that activate the agent and start a workflow. For Amy, this could be a new ticket being created in Zendesk (onTicketCreated) or a new message arriving in a support chat (onMessageReceived). Triggers make the agent proactive, allowing it to respond to the digital environment in real-time without manual intervention.
This is where the agent's intelligence comes to life.
Together, searches and actions form a perception-action loop. The agent senses a trigger, searches for relevant information, decides on the best action, and executes it.
When you define these components in code, you are doing more than just building an agent; you are codifying a business process. This "Business-as-Code" approach is the core philosophy of Agents.do.
By defining your digital workforce in code, you gain the benefits that developers have relied on for decades:
The era of the autonomous agent is here. Building an effective digital workforce requires a structured, transparent, and powerful framework. By understanding the anatomy of an agent, you can move from simple automation to building a truly intelligent AI workforce.
Ready to build your first digital worker? Explore the Agents.do platform and turn your complex business processes into simple, manageable code.