Your first message on the platform
New accounts land in Alice's chat instead of an empty marketplace, so the first thing you do on Sistava is describe what you need, not configure anything.
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.
Sign up and a Personal Assistant is already there, the moment you land in the app, with no marketplace trip and no setup step first. It can answer questions about the platform, help you think through what to delegate, and walk you through hiring the rest of your team when you're ready.
This solves the blank-page problem every new account has: who do I hire first? The answer is nobody, the assistant is already working before you've made a single hiring decision, and the full marketplace is still there whenever you want a specialist.
It's available on every plan, including Free, so the first conversation on the platform always works, not something gated behind a purchase.
It's a real AI employee, not a chatbot demo. It has the same memory, tools, and platform awareness as any specialist you go on to hire, it just comes pre-configured for one job: getting you from a blank account to a working AI workforce.
The assistant every account starts with, Alice, connects to Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Calendly, Google Meet, and Zoom, and covers scheduling and calendar management, inbox triage, meeting notes and action items, research briefs, travel planning, and follow-up reminders out of the box, the same skill set any specialist employee draws from, not a stripped-down starter kit.
What she holds is a mix of jobs she can run end to end and habits she keeps whatever she is doing. The jobs are the recognisable ones: pull together a research brief, sort out a calendar, triage an inbox, write up meeting notes and the actions that came out of them, produce a daily brief, plan a trip, chase the follow-ups. The habits are the part you notice over weeks rather than minutes: protect your time, never drop a thread, anticipate rather than wait to be asked, remember what matters, write in your voice, and keep what you tell her confidential.
She is also a team leader, not a lone assistant, and that is what stops her becoming a bottleneck. When a request needs real depth, a marketing campaign, a legal review, a sales sequence, she can hand it to the specialist you hired for it and bring the finished work back to you, so you keep one point of contact instead of managing a roster. As your team grows she becomes the person you talk to about everything and the one who works out who should actually do it.
No Blank-Page Moment
Most tools hand a new account an empty screen and a marketplace to browse before anything happens. Sistava skips that: a Personal Assistant is already assigned, so the very first thing you can do is talk, not configure.
It can plan what to delegate first, explain what the platform can do for your specific business, and hire the rest of your team on your behalf as you describe what you need. You never have to hit a marketplace before getting a single answer.
One Assistant For Work And For Life
There is one Personal Assistant, Alice, and she covers both sides of your day rather than making you pick a lane first. Business questions, delegation, and planning sit alongside the calendar, the inbox, travel, and the errands that quietly eat an afternoon. Splitting that across two assistants only ever meant explaining yourself twice.
She hands off the moment a request calls for real depth, so you're never stuck explaining a task to someone who isn't the right fit for it. Alice leads your team, which means a job needing a marketer, a salesperson, or a paralegal goes to that specialist and comes back to you through her.
It Still Counts as an Employee
The Personal Assistant isn't a free extra sitting outside your plan, it's a normal employee on your roster and counts toward your plan's employee limit. On the Free plan, that limit is 2 employees, so the assistant already fills one of your two seats before you hire anyone else.
You can only have one active Personal Assistant of a given template per account at a time: hiring it a second time while the first is still active is blocked. Terminate it and the slot frees up, so you can hire it again later if you change your mind.
How It Works
A workspace with zero employees never stays empty for long.
The instant a new account has no employees yet, the workspace auto-hires Alice through the same hire flow the marketplace button uses, then drops you straight into her chat, no browsing step and no blank screen in between.
Alice runs on the platform's standard employee build, the same memory, skill set, and tool access as any employee you hire afterward. She isn't a scripted demo with a narrower feature set: she can answer questions about how Sistava works and help you reason through what to delegate first.
She's a generalist, not a hiring manager: she can walk you through the decision and point you to the right specialist, but bringing that specialist on is still a click on the marketplace button she surfaces, not something she does unattended in the background. She keeps working alongside your team after that, she doesn't get replaced by the first specialist you hire.
Use Cases
Deciding who to hire first
Talk through your business with Alice before browsing the marketplace. She explains what the platform can do for your specific situation and points you toward the specialist that fits, so you're not guessing from a list of job titles.
A standing generalist for everyday asks
After you've hired specialists, Alice is still there for the questions and small tasks that don't need a dedicated hire, so you're never stuck deciding which employee to bother with a one-off ask.
The day your calendar and inbox get away from you
Hand Alice the pile: triage the inbox, work out which meetings actually need you, write up the notes and the actions from the ones you sat through, and chase the follow-ups you meant to send on Tuesday. You get back the hours that usually disappear into admin, and nothing quietly falls through.
Comparison
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| A new account opens on an empty screen and a marketplace to browse before anything happens. | A Personal Assistant is already hired and already in a conversation with you. |
| You have to decide who to hire before you can find out what any of them would do for you. | Describe the problem to Alice and she points you at the specialist that actually fits. |
| The assistant a product gives you for free is a stripped-down version of the real thing. | Alice runs on the same build as any specialist: same memory, same tools, same platform awareness. |
| Every small ask means deciding which employee to open and re-explaining the background. | One standing generalist takes the ask, handles it or hands it to the right teammate, and reports back. |
FAQ
Do I have to pay to get a Personal Assistant?
No, it's included on every plan, including Free, from the moment you sign up.
Can I still hire specialists from the marketplace?
Yes, the Personal Assistant is a starting point, not a replacement. The full marketplace is available anytime.
Which Personal Assistant do I get when I sign up?
Alice. She is hired into every new account automatically and covers both work and everyday life, from business questions and delegation through to the calendar, the inbox, and travel. She is ready to talk the moment you land in the app.
Is the Personal Assistant a limited demo version of a real employee?
No, it's a full AI employee with the same memory and tools as any specialist. It's just pre-configured to help you get started.
Does the Personal Assistant count against my plan's employee limit?
Yes. It's a normal employee on your roster, not a free extra outside your plan. On the Free plan, which allows 2 employees, it fills one of your two seats from the start.
What happens if I terminate the Personal Assistant?
You lose that assistant and the seat it held frees up. You can hire the same template again afterward, since the block only applies while one is already active.
What can my Personal Assistant actually do on the first day?
Scheduling and calendar management, inbox triage, meeting notes and the actions that come out of them, research briefs, a daily brief, travel planning, and chasing follow-ups. She connects to Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Calendly, Google Meet, and Zoom among others, so most of that works as soon as you connect the account she needs.
Can I rename my Personal Assistant or change how she talks to me?
Yes. Her Profile tab is fully editable, including name, role, avatar, persona, language, and tone of voice, and there is no rehire involved. Changes take effect from her next message, across every channel she uses.
Where Personal Assistants fits
Personal Assistants 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: A full workforce. Hired in seconds.
Read the guide
More in Fast Onboarding
- Hire an AI 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: 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: 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.
- Get Started Through Conversation: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.