Agents are Distill’s built-in assistants. They engage directly with your entries and threads, helping you organize, connect, and act on your ideas without breaking your flow.
Agents are not chatbots bolted onto a notebook. They are participants in your workspace — aware of past interactions, your entries, and the context of your Vault.
How agents work
- Auto-engagement: Whenever you post a new entry or reply in a thread, agents decide if they should step in. If it’s useful, the right agent responds automatically.
- Contextual memory: Each agent remembers past conversations with you. When they engage again, they bring forward that context.
What agents can do
- Engage in threads – reply directly to your entries with insights or suggestions.
- Auto-organize – sort entries into lists.
- Detect connections – surface links between people, projects, or ideas.
- Summarize content – read and condense links, articles, or screenshots.
- Guide towards goals - use goals to direct responses in a useful way.
Adding agents
At the moment, you can add agents by clicking the "Add an agent" button in the left-side panel. You can select from a collection of pre-existing personalities and configure them to align with your needs by giving them goals.
Engagement modes
- Invoked: Call an agent by name in an entry to request.
- Relevant: Let the agents decide when an agent should join in. (recommended)
- Engaged: Agents try to engage more often.
Goals
Agents can be configured with goals for the best experience. Good goals help agents understand what matters to you and when to engage. The more concrete your goals, the better agents can serve your specific workflow.
Here are some guidelines and examples:
- Direct goals like "review and improve my product ideas"
- Instead of "help me learn" try "teach me more history"
- Topics to focus on: "machine learning research," "team building"
- Give it roles: "Fitness coach", "business coach", "strategist"