# Guided Onboarding

The moment you hire an employee, their first chat message shows a card of named jobs they can start right now, not a blank input box. Pick up to four, click Let's go, and the employee begins working immediately instead of asking what you want. No setup wizard, no blank page.

When you hire a new AI employee, it does not start working blindly. It goes through a guided onboarding flow that teaches it about your company, your team, your goals, and its specific role. By the time onboarding completes, the employee understands the context it needs to deliver quality work from its very first task.

Onboarding covers five areas: company context (what you do, who your customers are), team goals (what the team is working toward this quarter), skill activation (which skills to enable and configure), tool connections (which apps to connect via OAuth), and a first-task warmup (a practice task to verify everything works). The entire flow takes minutes.

For teams, the leader onboards first and then guides each new team member through the process. This ensures the leader's understanding of company context flows down to every specialist. The result is a team that is aligned from day one, not a collection of individuals who each heard a different version of the goals.

## Five Steps That Turn a New Hire Into a Productive Agent

Guided Onboarding walks every new AI employee through a structured five-step setup: company context, team goals, skill assignments, tool connections, and first task. By the end, the agent has everything it needs to start producing real work, not just answer questions.

Each step is interactive. You provide the inputs, the AI agent processes them into its working context, and the system confirms what was configured. No guessing whether your agent actually absorbed the company background or knows which tools it can use.

## Context That Sticks Across Sessions

Onboarding is not a one-time tutorial. The context your agent receives during onboarding becomes its persistent foundation. Company mission, team structure, priorities, and preferences are stored and referenced every time the agent starts a new task or makes a decision.

When you update company goals or team structure, you update the agent's context and it carries forward. Autonomous agents that stay current with your organization, not frozen in the context they received on day one.

## Repeatable Process for Scaling Your AI Workforce

Onboarding is designed to be repeatable. Hire a second AI employee for a different department and the same five steps apply. Shared context like company background is pre-filled. Department-specific goals and skills are added on top. New hires get up to speed in minutes, not days.

For teams using role templates, onboarding inherits the template's skill and tool assignments automatically. The manager just reviews, confirms, and assigns the first task. Scaling to a multi-agent workforce is a process, not a project.

## How It Works

**Every new AI employee completes a structured 5-step onboarding that orients them before their first task.**

When an agent is hired, it immediately begins onboarding. It reads the company profile, reviews its assigned skills and duties, inspects its available tools, checks in with its team leader if it has one, and sets its initial priorities. This happens automatically, without any input from you. By the time you open a conversation, the agent already knows the context.

Onboarding is not a one-time event. When you change the company profile, reassign skills, or add new tools, the agent is notified and re-orients itself. Agents that join an existing team also review the team charter and any shared knowledge the team has built up. Every agent starts informed, not blank.

## Use Cases

### First-time user hiring their first AI employee

A guided setup walks you through naming, configuring, and deploying your AI agent. You go from zero to working in minutes.

### Team lead bringing AI into their workflow for the first time

The onboarding flow surfaces the right options at the right time. No documentation needed, just follow the steps.

### Manager setting up an AI agent for a non-technical colleague

The guided experience removes guesswork. Your colleague can configure and launch their own AI employee without training.

### Founder validating an AI employee setup quickly

Onboarding keeps you moving fast. Each step builds on the last so you can test the agent before the session is over.

## Comparison

| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Setting up an AI agent means reading docs and figuring out what goes where. | A guided flow walks you through every step in the right order. |
| First-time users get lost in settings and give up. | Onboarding surfaces only what matters, when it matters. |
| New team members need training before they can hire an AI agent. | The guided flow is self-explanatory, anyone can set up an agent. |
| It's unclear what a good agent setup looks like. | Onboarding builds the right foundation from the start. |

## FAQ

### What happens during each of the five onboarding steps?

Step 1 gives the agent company context. Step 2 sets team goals. Step 3 assigns skills. Step 4 connects tools. Step 5 assigns the first task. Each step is confirmed before moving forward so nothing is skipped or ambiguous.

### Can I skip onboarding steps if I just want a quick setup?

You can complete onboarding at your own pace and return to earlier steps to update context. However, skipping steps means the agent starts without that context, which affects the quality of its early work.

### Does onboarding need to be repeated if I hire a second AI employee?

No. Shared context like company background is reused. You only need to configure what is specific to the new employee: their role, goals, and tool assignments.

### Can onboarding context be updated after the initial hire?

Yes. Company context, team goals, and skill assignments can all be updated after onboarding. Changes take effect immediately for that employee's next session.

### How long does it take to get an AI employee up and running?

The guided onboarding walks you through five steps, from naming your employee to connecting tools, and most users complete it in under ten minutes. No technical setup is required.

> I was expecting to spend an hour briefing the agent on our company. It already knew who we are, what we do, and what its job was before I typed a single message.
>
> Priya N., CEO · early-stage startup

## Where Guided Onboarding fits

Guided Onboarding 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: Guided Onboarding](/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.
- [Employee Builder](/en/features/hire/custom_employee): 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.
- [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.

## Explore

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