What an agent is allowed to do
Four switches decide whether an agent may email, post to Slack, spend enrichment credits, or write to your CRM instead of staging changes for review. A test run lets you watch one work before it writes anything.
Before you start
- You can set up background agents, or you are reviewing changes an agent already staged.
An agent starts with the minimum. It can read your CRM, your mail, your calendar and the web, because that is what makes it useful. Everything that leaves Spiich or spends money is off until you turn it on, per agent, in the form.
The four switches
| Switch | What it unlocks |
|---|---|
| Allow email sending | The agent may email reports and summaries. A recipient list opens underneath. |
| Allow Slack messaging | The agent may post reports to Slack, as a DM to its owner or into channels you choose. |
| Allow phone & email enrichment | The agent may look up phone numbers and email addresses for contacts. Each enrichment uses additional credits. |
| Proposal mode | The agent stages every CRM change for review instead of writing it. |
The agent dashboard has a Capabilities panel that lists which of Email, Slack and Enrichment are on, so you can audit an agent without opening its configuration. An agent with none reads "No optional capabilities".
Email recipients
Switching on Allow email sending opens a list of teammates. The agent's own member is always mailed, shown as (always), plus anyone you switch on. Some agents deliver per record and treat the list as the exact recipient set instead; for those, the owner can be switched off too.
Slack channels
The Slack section only appears when the workspace is connected to Slack. You choose whether the agent DMs its owner and which specific channels it may post to. A channel only shows up after the Spiich app has been invited to it in Slack. If one is missing, invite the app in Slack and click the refresh icon next to "Don't see a channel? Invite the Spiich app to it in Slack first, then refresh." See Connect Slack.
Enrichment
Off by default. When it is off, the enrichment tools are not handed to the agent at all, so it cannot spend that budget by accident. When it is on, each phone or email lookup consumes credits on top of the run cost. See Credits and usage.
Proposal mode and the approval queue
Proposal mode is what you reach for when you are not yet ready to let an agent touch the CRM unsupervised. With it on, every CRM change the agent wants to make is staged instead of written. Nothing reaches your CRM until a person approves it.
Staged changes show up in three places: as a "pending writes" button in the Background Agents header, on the agent's own row, and as a badge on the sidebar nav item.
Open the queue
Click the pending writes button, or open the agent and go to Proposals > Review all.
Read the proposed changes
Each row is one proposed record change, with its Action, what is Proposed, and its Status. Filter by Pending, Added, Dismissed or All.
Approve or discard
Select the rows you want and click Add to CRM, or Dismiss to discard them. Both work in bulk.
Approving and dismissing staged changes is open to every member, not just the people who can build agents.
Try an agent before it writes anything
The Test agent button, the flask icon on an agent row, runs the agent exactly as a real run would, except every CRM change is staged for review instead of written. It does not change the agent's own Proposal mode setting, so you can test an agent that normally writes directly.
Start the test
Hover the agent's row, or open the agent, and click the flask icon.
Pick a record, for an event-based agent
Search for and select the record you want it to run against.
Confirm
The dialog states the credit cost and that changes will be staged. Click Yes, test now.
Read what it did
Open the run and read the Run plan and Entities modified. See Read and manage agent runs.
Deal with the staged changes
Open Proposals and either add the changes you agree with to the CRM, or dismiss them.
Make it permanent, if you want to
If you want every future run to work this way, open Configure and switch on Proposal mode.
Who can change permissions
Editing an agent's permissions is editing the agent, so it needs the same grant. Admins have it by default and can extend it per member or per team.
An agent that runs as an admin can only be changed by an admin. If the pause, edit and delete buttons are greyed out on a colleague's agent, that is why. Copy it to yourself instead: the copy runs as you.
Limits
- Slack options are hidden entirely when the workspace has no Slack connection.
- A test run is refused for agents whose writes cannot be staged. Spiich withholds the button rather than letting a test change data for real.
- Enrichment credits are consumed per lookup and are separate from the agent's run price.
- Permissions are per agent. Copying an agent does not copy its Slack channel, and the copy emails you rather than the original owner.
If something goes wrong
Proposal mode is on but nothing is waiting for review. Either the agent has not run yet, or it made no CRM changes. "No writes waiting for review" next to a completed run means it found nothing to change. Open the run's Run plan to see what it did.
The flask button is not shown. That agent cannot stage its writes. Test it on a single safe record with Run agent now instead, or rebuild the same idea as a Custom agent.
A Slack channel is missing from the list. The Spiich app has not been invited to it, or the list is stale. Invite the app in Slack, then click refresh.
"Could not add these changes to the CRM." A transient failure on the CRM side. The proposals are still queued, so try again shortly. If it keeps failing, see CRM sync problems.