# Employee Builder

Employee Builder is the "Build Your Own" card in the Marketplace: instead of hiring a pre-built role, you start from a blank template and set the name, role, and persona yourself. The new hire starts with one skill, Research & Brief, and nothing else pre-assigned, so you add skills, duties, and tools from the Skills, Duties, and Tools tabs to match the exact job you need done. It is a Custom-plan feature; every other plan hires from the marketplace's pre-built roles instead.

When the marketplace does not have the exact role you need, build it. The Custom Employee Builder lets you assemble an AI employee from scratch: pick skills from the catalog, assign the tools they need, write behavioral duties, shape the persona, and select the AI model. The result is an employee designed specifically for your workflow.

Imagine you need someone who monitors competitor pricing pages every morning, compares them against your own catalog, and writes a daily summary for your sales team. No marketplace role does that. With the builder, you create it in minutes: assign web scraping and research skills, connect Google Sheets and Slack, set a duty to always format results as a comparison table, and schedule it to run at 7 AM.

Custom employees are not second-class. They get the same task board, personal Drive, work journal, scheduling, memory, and team collaboration features as any marketplace hire. The only difference is that you designed the role instead of picking one off the shelf.

No matter how niche the workflow, the builder supports it. You define the job. The employee does it.

## Build an AI Employee Designed Exactly for Your Workflow

When no pre-built role fits your needs, the Custom Employee Builder lets you construct an AI agent from the ground up. You define the persona, choose the skills it masters, assign the tools it can use, and set the behavioral duties it follows on every interaction.

This level of control is what separates a purpose-built AI employee from a generic AI assistant. A custom agent built for your legal team will behave completely differently from one built for your growth team, because you shaped both from the start.

Custom AI employees are ideal for specialized roles unique to your industry or company, workflows that combine functions no single pre-built role covers, and positions where brand voice and behavioral consistency are non-negotiable.

## Every Dimension of the Agent Is Configurable

Persona sets how the agent communicates: its name, tone, style, and the AI model it runs on. You can make it formal or conversational, terse or detailed, and switch the underlying model (GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, and others) based on the task type and cost profile you need.

Skills define what the agent has learned to do well. You assign skills from the catalog or teach new ones through natural conversation. Duties are behavioral rules that stay active on every interaction, things like "always cite sources" or "never quote pricing without approval."

Tools connect the agent to external systems: web browsers, databases, APIs, email, Slack, Notion, and more. A custom AI agent with the right tool stack can autonomously complete multi-step workflows without human hand-holding.

## From Zero to Deployed Agent in One Session

The builder walks you through each configuration layer in sequence. You do not need to understand AI orchestration or agent architecture to use it. If you know what the role needs to accomplish, you have everything required to build it.

Once deployed, the custom AI employee begins learning from interactions. Memory layers capture context over time, so the agent gets sharper on your specific business the longer it works. This is not a static configuration, it is a foundation that evolves.

## How It Works

**Define every detail of your AI agent from scratch: name, persona, model, skills, duties, and tools.**

The custom employee builder walks you through each dimension of the agent one step at a time. You name it, write its persona, choose the AI model it runs on, and then layer in skills from the catalog, behavioral duties it must always follow, and tools it can use. The result is an agent built exactly for your workflow, not adapted from someone else's.

Custom agents are useful when no pre-built role fits your context. Build a compliance reviewer that knows your internal policies, a research agent trained on your industry, or a client-facing assistant that matches your brand voice precisely. Once built, the agent runs the same onboarding flow as any hired employee and is ready to work immediately.

## Use Cases

### Product team building a specialized research agent

Create an AI employee tuned to your exact product context, with the right tools, knowledge, and behavior baked in from the start.

### Founder designing a brand-aligned customer agent

Define the persona, tone, and capabilities to match your brand. Every interaction reflects how you want to show up.

### IT team building an internal support agent

Configure an AI agent with access to internal docs, systems, and tools, then deploy it to handle support requests automatically.

### Sales team creating a prospecting agent from scratch

Build an AI employee with outreach tools, CRM access, and sales knowledge already loaded, ready to work your pipeline.

## Comparison

| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Generic AI tools don't fit your specific workflows or context. | Build an AI employee configured exactly for your role, tools, and knowledge. |
| Customization requires engineering time or vendor support. | Compose your AI agent through a guided interface, no code required. |
| One-size-fits-all agents miss the nuance of your business. | Every capability, persona, and rule is set to match your exact needs. |
| Starting from scratch every time is slow and inconsistent. | Build once, reuse as a template, and hire from it anytime. |

## FAQ

### Do I need technical knowledge to build a custom AI employee?

No. The builder is designed for team leads, operations managers, and founders, not engineers. You configure through a structured UI and natural language, with no code or prompt engineering required.

### What is the difference between skills, duties, and tools?

Skills are capabilities the agent has learned (like "advanced research" or "content writing"). Duties are always-on behavioral rules that govern how it responds. Tools are external integrations the agent can actively use, like web search, email, or a connected database.

### Can I update a custom AI employee after it is deployed?

Yes, at any time. You can add or remove skills through chat, update duties, swap tools, change the AI model, or adjust the persona. Changes take effect immediately without redeployment.

### How is a custom AI agent different from a fine-tuned AI model?

Fine-tuning modifies a model at the weights level, which requires data, compute, and ML expertise. A custom AI employee is configured at the behavior and knowledge layer, meaning you get a specialized agent in minutes without touching model internals.

### Can I build a custom AI employee tailored to my specific business role?

Yes. The custom builder lets you define the name, persona, skills, duties, tools, and connected apps for any role your business needs. You're not limited to preset templates.

> We needed an agent that understood our specific compliance requirements. The custom builder let us define exactly what it knows and exactly how it behaves. No compromises.
>
> David K., Head of Operations · regulated industry

## Where Employee Builder fits

Employee Builder is part of Things you hire or set up.

Browse a marketplace of pre-built AI agent roles and full teams, or build your own from scratch. Organize them into teams with leaders, set up your org chart, and onboard new hires in minutes. Every employee arrives configured and ready to deliver from day one.

- [Things you hire or set up](/en/features/hire): A full workforce. Hired in seconds.

## Read the guide

- [Guide: Employee Builder](/en/guide/setup/hire)

## More in Fast Onboarding

- [Hire an AI Employee](/en/features/hire/hire_individual_employee): Browse the Marketplace and hire an AI employee for a specific role: a department specialist, a personal assistant, or a custom role you define from scratch. Hiring is free and instant. You land straight in the new employee's chat, and every skill, duty, and tool it starts with can be changed afterward from its dashboard.
- [Interview Before Hiring](/en/features/hire/interview_employee): Chat with any employee template before you hire it, on the public marketplace pages or inside the app, to see how it thinks and communicates about your actual work. When you're convinced, say so in the conversation or click Hire; nothing is added to your team until you decide.
- [Personal Assistants](/en/features/hire/personal_assistants): Every account starts with a Personal Assistant already hired, ready to talk before you decide who else to bring on. No marketplace trip, no setup, no decision to make first.
- [Get Started Through Conversation](/en/features/hire/employee_driven_onboarding): When you hire an AI employee, they land in your chat with a short greeting that names their role and what they handle, then ask what you need first. There is no setup wizard, no progress bar, and no settings panel to fill in before they can work. You customize name, persona, skills, and tools later from their dashboard, but none of that is required before the first message.
- [Model Selection](/en/features/hire/model_selection): Every employee runs on a model you choose, not one fixed default. Switch models per employee from the AI Models page whenever a job calls for more reasoning power or a cheaper, faster response.
- [Manage Employee Status](/en/features/hire/employee_state_lifecycle): Pause, resume, or let go of an AI employee without losing anything. Suspend an employee when you don't need them right now and bring them back exactly as you left them, or terminate one and keep their full chat history and work record in your Alumni list. Terminated employees stop counting against your plan's employee limit, and you can re-hire the same role later.
- [Hire a Full Team](/en/features/hire/hire_full_team): Hire a complete pre-built team from the Marketplace in one click: every member configured, a leader assigned, and sprint planning ready to start. Or build a custom team from your existing hires, pick a leader, and set it up yourself. Either way, you talk to one leader and they coordinate the rest.
- [Keep Former Team Members](/en/features/hire/alumni_team): When you let an employee go, they don't disappear. Sistava moves them into your Alumni list, where their chat history and work stay intact and readable. If you need them back, one click restores them to active with everything they knew still in place.
- [Marketplace](/en/features/hire/marketplace): The Marketplace is where you browse and hire AI employees: two personal assistants, a specialist for every department (Marketing, Sales, Support, HR, Operations), and a Custom AI Talent card if none of the pre-built roles fit. Click a card's photo to preview its skills, duties, tools, and persona before you commit, then click Hire to add it to your workforce and land straight in its chat. Hiring is free; you only spend credits when an employee does work.
- [Employee Avatar Upload](/en/features/hire/employee_avatar_upload): Upload a custom profile photo for any AI employee straight from their Profile tab, replacing the default generated avatar. JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP files up to 5 MB are accepted, and the change takes effect immediately. The photo appears everywhere that employee shows up: chat, the org chart, the virtual office, notifications, and task cards. Any member of your workspace can change it, not only the person who hired that employee.
- [Multiple Workspaces](/en/features/hire/multi_tenancy): Create additional workspaces under the same login, each with its own AI employees, conversations, training data, billing, and collaborators. Nothing crosses a workspace boundary by default, so a separate client, business, or department stays fully isolated. Your plan sets how many workspaces you can create, and you switch between them without signing out.
- [Academy Live Sessions](/en/features/hire/academy_live_sessions): Learn how to put an AI employee to work in a live session with an Applied AI Engineer, tailored to your business. Sessions run about an hour, one on one or in a small group, and walk through the same curriculum as the free Academy course. Free for founders, one hundred dollars per session otherwise.

## Explore

- [Every feature](/en/features)
- [Hire an AI employee](/en/market)
- [Pricing](/en/pricing)