Built-in agents: Spark, Solutions Engineer and Coding Assistant

Every workspace comes with three agents built into SPARK: Spark, Solutions Engineer and Coding Assistant. You do not create, configure or give them tools: they are ready the moment the workspace exists, and an administrator decides which of them the workspace uses.

Spark

Spark coordinates the workspace: agents, workflows, canvases, spaces, tasks, data and files. It runs with every Spark tool, so it can read and change anything in the workspace you could ask it about, and it loads the skills that explain how to build workflows, write agents and write good prompts.

Spark runs on NGT Auto, which picks a model for each message (see Models), and it can take up to 35 steps to answer one message, more than the 20 a new agent starts with, because setting something up often takes several actions at once.

Ask Spark

Spark answers any new thread that names no other agent. On the New Thread page the composer reads Ask Spark or name an agent…: type your message and send it, and Spark answers. To ask another agent, type @ or start typing the agent's name. See Start a thread.

Spark is also under Direct Messages in the Threads panel, as every agent you can talk to is.

Solutions Engineer

Solutions Engineer interviews you about your processes, proposes a setup for this workspace (data objects, workflows, files and tasks) and creates it once you approve. It runs with every Spark tool, as Spark does, and asks before it creates anything.

You reach it three ways:

• Welcome to Spark: the first time you open a workspace you have just made, a short wizard asks a few questions, starting with Why do you want to use Spark? and What does your team work on? (A few quick questions to help you build your first use cases.). Your answers become the first message of a thread with Solutions Engineer, which replies with its proposal.
• Ask Solutions Engineer, in the menu beside New on the Agents page.
• The hammer at the top right of the app, Build with Solutions Engineer.

The last two ask first. Build with Solutions Engineer? says that it creates the setup only once you approve the plan, and Start thread opens a new thread with it. Solutions Engineer is also under Direct Messages in the Threads panel.

Coding Assistant

Coding Assistant writes the Python for a workflow's Custom Code step from what you describe. You reach it from that step, not from a thread: the step's Ask agent button opens a dialog where you describe the code you need under Prompt, and the assistant's code appears under Preview for you to use in the step. See Build a workflow.

Switch a built-in agent on or off

Open Agent Studio, then Agents. The built-in agents sit in their own folded Built-in agents section below your agents: click it to open it. Their cards show what each agent is, its model and its tool and skill counts, but they open nothing and have no ⋯ menu: no one can edit, rename or delete a built-in agent. Built-in agents wear NGT's purple lens.

Each built-in card has a switch at its top right, also on its right-click menu. Turning an agent off removes it from everywhere it is reached, and its card dims:

• Spark off: a new thread no longer goes to Spark. The composer asks you to name an agent instead (Call an agent by name to start exploring…).
• Solutions Engineer off: Ask Solutions Engineer and the hammer disappear, and the Welcome to Spark wizard has no one to hand its answers to.
• Coding Assistant off: the Custom Code step no longer offers Ask agent.

Only an administrator can switch a built-in agent. For anyone else the switch is disabled, and hovering it says Requires admin role.

Where to go next

• Start a thread
• Create an agent
• Models
• Tools