# Team agents

> Agents your team makes for itself: a name, instructions and a set of tools, working on the team's boards when someone asks or on a schedule, with every run and its result kept where the whole team can read it.

A team agent is a teammate you write down once. It has a name, a drawn icon,
instructions in plain words, and the tools it may use. It works in the team
workspace it was made in, on that workspace's boards and notes, and it can run
when someone presses a button or by itself on a schedule.

Team agents come with the Team plan. Margin Intelligence, the assistant every
plan has, is a different thing: it works for one person in a chat. A team agent
does one job for the whole team and leaves its result where everyone can read
it.

## Where they live

**Team → Agents** in the sidebar. The page opens on the team's
agents, then the recent runs, then pacts, the decisions waiting on a person and
the outside assistants connected here.

You can also get there from the command palette (`⌘ K`):
**New agent** opens the page with a new agent already started, and **Agents**
opens the page. The Team hub's overview has a strip of the team's agents too.

> **Note: Not in a team workspace** In a personal or family workspace, **Intelligence → Agents**
> says that agents come with the Team plan and links to the pricing page. In a
> team workspace the same address takes you to **Team → Agents**.

## Making one

Press **New agent**, or start from one of the three starters
below and change what you like.

- **Name and icon**: what the team sees on the card and in each run. The icons are drawn, the
  same family as the rest of the app.
- **Instructions**: how the agent should work, written the way you would brief a new colleague:
  what to look at, what to write, and what to leave alone.
- **Tools**: what it may do, picked from the same list of tools Margin Intelligence uses:
  reading boards and cards, commenting, writing notes, and so on. Pick only
  what the job needs. Three tools are never offered: an agent cannot create,
  change or delete agents, so nothing it reads can rewrite its own
  instructions.

- **Schedules**: optional. See below.

## The three starters

| Starter         | When it runs          | What it writes                                                                                              |
| --------------- | --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Weekly digest   | Every Monday, 9:00 AM | What was finished last week, what is due this week and what is overdue, naming the people                   |
| What's blocked  | Weekdays, 9:30 AM     | Cards that are overdue, have no owner or have not moved in a week, who each one waits on, and the next step |
| Standup summary | Weekdays, 8:30 AM     | One line per person: finished yesterday, on today, stuck on                                                 |

Each one reads the boards and writes its answer as the run's result, which the
whole team reads under Recent runs. None of them changes a card. If you want
one to comment on cards or write a note as well, give it that tool and say so
in its instructions.

A starter is only a filled-in form. Nothing runs until you save it, and you can
change the times, the task and the tools first.

## Schedules

A schedule is a time and a task. Pick how often (every day, weekdays, or one
day of the week), a time on the quarter hour, and write what the agent should
do each time. The time zone is your browser's unless you change it, and the
time stays put across daylight saving.

An agent can have up to four schedules, so one agent can write a digest on
Monday and a reminder on Thursday. The email switch below covers all of them. The card shows each schedule in words, like
"Every Monday at 9:00 AM", and when it runs next.

A new or edited schedule starts with its next time, so saving "Every day at
9:00 AM" in the afternoon first runs tomorrow morning. If the scheduler was
down when a run was due and more than six hours have passed, that run is
skipped rather than sent late. A Monday digest arriving on Monday night is no
use to anyone.

If your team requires Google sign-in on its domain, a scheduled run needs the
agent's maker to have a Google account on that domain linked to The Margin.
Otherwise the run is skipped, the same way a person without one could not open
the workspace.

## Runs and results

**Run now** runs an agent straight away, with its first
scheduled task or with something you type. Runs land under **Recent runs** with
who started it, when, and how it went. Open a run to read its result in full.
Scheduled runs are there for the whole team. A run you start by hand is yours:
you see it, and so do the workspace's owner and admins, but other members do
not.

Each run in the list also says what it cost, like "On schedule · 2h ago · 3
AI actions". A run that is still going, or one from before costs were shown,
has no number yet.

When a scheduled run finishes, the person who made the agent gets a
notification that links straight to that run.

## Email me the result

Turn on **Email me the result** in the agent's schedule and each scheduled run
is also emailed to the person who made the agent: the result as plain text, a
link to the run, and a line at the bottom to stop the emails. That link stops
them in one click, with no sign-in, and leaves the agent running on its
schedule. You can turn the emails back on in the agent's settings. A run you
start with **Run now** is not emailed, because you are
already watching it.

Result emails go out with the rest of The Margin's product mail, so on a busy
day one can arrive a little after the run.

## Who can do what

- **Switch off or remove from this workspace**: the person who made the agent, or a workspace owner or admin.
- **Read the agents and their runs**: everyone in the workspace, with the run rule above.

- **Make an agent**: any member of the team workspace.
- **Edit or delete**: the person who made the agent, and only them.

An agent belongs to the person who made it and works with their standing, so
only they can change its instructions, tools or schedules. An owner or admin
can open it to read what it does, switch it off here or remove it from this
workspace. Switching an agent off in a workspace keeps it and its history; it
just stops running there, schedules included. The person who made it can
always delete it, even after the workspace leaves the Team plan.

## What it costs

Runs use AI actions like any request to the assistant, and they draw from the
team's pooled allowance: 600 actions a seat a month. A run you start
with **Run now** counts as yours. A scheduled run counts as the
actions of the person who made the agent, so a cap an admin has set on that
person holds for their agents too. When the pool or that cap runs out, scheduled
runs are skipped until it resets, and the rest of the app keeps working. See
[Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits).

An agent runs only while the person who made it is still in the workspace. If
they leave, its schedules stop; an owner or admin can make a new one from the
same instructions.

A short run is a few actions. A run that reads many boards and writes several
comments is more, so a narrow task and a short tool list cost less than a broad
one.

## From an outside assistant

The agent tools are on both MCP servers, so an assistant you connect can list,
read, make, change and remove the team's agents in a Team workspace:
`list_agent_definitions`, `list_agent_instances`, `list_agent_configs`,
`get_agent_config`, `create_agent_config`, `update_agent_config` and
`delete_agent_config`. `check_feature` with `custom_agents` tells it whether
the workspace has them. In a workspace without the Team plan these tools are
refused.

> **For agents: For agents** Team agents are the `custom_agents` feature, on the Team tier only. To email
> each scheduled result to the agent's maker, put `"email": true` in the
> schedule's config. Before
> making one for a person, call `check_feature` for `custom_agents` in the
> workspace you are acting in. A run is a durable turn aimed at the agent, so its
> result is readable afterwards in the app under Recent runs.

> **On the phone:** The phone app shows the same agents. Open the Margin room and pick **Agents**
> on the lens rail.

**Where to next**

- [Team hub](https://themarginapp.com/docs/team-hub): the rest of the team workspace
- [Margin Intelligence](https://themarginapp.com/docs/margin-ai): the assistant every plan has
- [Agent pacts](https://themarginapp.com/docs/agent-pacts): several agents on one job, under rules the server enforces
- [Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits): what Team includes and why agents are on it


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Section: Together. Checked against the running product on October 3, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/team-agents. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt
