Sistava is an AI workforce platform where solo founders hire AI employees to run their business around the clock. Each AI employee has a specific role like sales, marketing, or customer support, with real tool integrations, persistent memory, and the ability to work inside your existing apps like Slack, Gmail, and HubSpot.

What is an AI employee?

An AI employee is an autonomous AI agent with a defined role, persona, skill set, and tool access. Unlike a chatbot that only answers questions, an AI employee takes on recurring work like writing emails, qualifying leads, answering support tickets, and publishing content, and it works on its own around the clock without being prompted each time.

How is Sistava different from project management software?

Sistava is not project management software. You hire AI employees who do the work, not a tool that tracks work done by humans. Your AI employees run sales outreach, write marketing content, answer support tickets, and handle operations on their own, without constant supervision.

How much does Sistava cost?

Sistava has a free plan you can start without a credit card, plus paid plans that scale with how much work you hand to your AI employees. See the pricing page for current plans.

What can AI employees do on Sistava?

Your AI employees take on the recurring work that runs a business: qualifying and reaching out to leads, writing and publishing marketing content, answering support tickets, and handling day to day operations. Each one comes with a role and skill set, so it can start working the day you hire it.

Sistava is built for solo founders and small teams who need to run sales, marketing, support, and operations without hiring a full human team. It gives you the equivalent of a growth team you can hire in minutes.

Shape Their Persona

Each employee has an identity you set on their Profile tab, and a brain the whole workspace shares from one place. This article covers both: who the employee is, and how the AI behind every employee is configured.

TL;DR

Go to Workspace, select an employee, open the Profile tab to set their name, role, background, language, and tone of voice. The AI model, thinking depth, and actions-per-turn limit are workspace-wide settings, not per-employee: change them at Settings > AI Config. Profile fields save automatically when you click away.

What Is on the Profile Tab

The Profile tab is divided into four sections:

Identity

Controls who the employee is.

Field	What It Does
Avatar	The employee's profile picture. Click it to upload a photo (JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP, up to 5 MB)
Name	Display name used in the sidebar, chat, and across the platform
Role	Job title shown on the employee's profile (e.g., "Content Writer," "Marketing Strategist")
Team	Which team the employee belongs to. Changing it moves them the same way dragging them on the org chart does

Reports To and Mentor are shown as read-only info: Reports To is derived from the employee's team leader (or you, if there is no leader), and Mentor is the same guide for every employee.

Persona

Controls who the employee is, not how they talk.

Field	What It Does
Background & Personality	A text field where you describe the employee's background, what they care about, and how they think about their work

This is the who, not the how, tone and language live in the Voice section below and should not repeat here. Each employee starts with a template-seeded default, and the employee can refine its own persona over time through the same field.

Voice

Controls how the employee talks.

Field	What It Does
Language	The employee's default language. Leave it empty and the employee mirrors whichever language you write in
Tone of Voice	Free text describing tone, e.g. "Warm and direct. Plain English, no jargon."

Contact

Where people can reach this employee directly.

Field	What It Does
Email	A live mailbox address (`<employee>@<yourworkspace>.mail.sista.ai`). Email it and the employee replies from the same address
Slack	Shows the connected Slack handle, or a button to connect Slack for this employee
Phone	Not available yet

AI Model, Thinking Depth, and Actions per Turn

These are not per-employee settings today. They are set once for the whole workspace at Settings > AI Config (/technical/ai-models), and every employee uses the same brain.

Field	What It Does
Model	Which AI model every employee uses by default. Grouped by tier: Fast, Standard, Advanced, and Frontier
Credits Saver	A toggle that automatically routes simple, conversational turns to a faster model and keeps the model above for real work
Thinking Depth	How hard the model reasons before responding. Only active for models that support extended reasoning
Creativity	The model's temperature (0 to 2, default 0.7). Lower is steadier and more predictable, higher is more varied
Actions per Turn	How many actions (tool calls, reads, searches) an employee can take in a single response

The model dropdown shows models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other providers, grouped by tier. Bigger models are smarter but slower and cost more credits per turn.

AI Model Tiers

Tier	Best For
Fast	Quick responses, lowest credit cost
Standard	Good balance of speed and capability
Advanced	Best quality, highest credit cost
Frontier	Top-of-line brains, the very best quality

Exact credit cost per model changes as providers change their pricing, so the number shown next to each model in the picker is always the current one, not a fixed table.

Thinking Depth

For models that support extended thinking:

Level	What It Does
Auto (Recommended)	Adjusts dynamically: quick for simple messages, deeper for complex ones
Off	No reasoning. Fastest responses, lowest cost
Minimal / Light / Medium / Deep	Increasing levels of reasoning depth and cost

The dropdown is disabled when the selected model does not support reasoning.

What You Can Do

Action	How
Change the name	Profile tab, Identity section. Edit the Name field, click away to save
Change the role	Profile tab, Identity section. Edit the Role field, click away to save
Upload a photo	Profile tab, Identity section. Click the avatar
Move the employee to another team	Profile tab, Identity section. Change the Team field
Set background and personality	Profile tab, Persona section. Write what shapes who they are
Set language and tone	Profile tab, Voice section
Switch the workspace AI model	Settings > AI Config. Select from the Model dropdown
Set thinking depth	Settings > AI Config. Select from the Thinking Depth dropdown
Set actions per turn	Settings > AI Config. Enter a number for the workspace

How to Set It Up

Go to Workspace, click on an employee in the sidebar
Open the Profile tab
Edit Identity, Persona, or Voice fields. Changes save automatically when you click away
To change the AI model or reasoning depth for every employee, go to Settings > AI Config

Tips and Tricks

Match the persona to the role. A customer-facing writer might be friendly and conversational. A legal analyst might be formal and precise.
Keep tone and language in Voice, not Persona. Persona is background and personality; repeating tone instructions there just duplicates what Voice already handles.
Use Fast for simple tasks. Quick lookups, formatting, and drafts cost less than Standard, Advanced, or Frontier models.
Try Credits Saver. It automatically sends simple, conversational turns to a cheaper model and keeps your chosen model for real work, at no setup cost.
Persona is not a skill. Do not put process instructions in the persona field. Use the Skills tab for workflows and the Duties tab for standing rules.

Good to Know

Model, thinking depth, and actions per turn are workspace-wide. Every employee currently shares the same brain settings. There is no per-employee override in the UI today.
Changes apply immediately. Updated persona, voice, and AI settings take effect on the next message. No restart needed.
No quality impact from persona. Persona and Voice change style, not the capability or accuracy of the work.
Provider fallback. If a model provider goes down, the gateway automatically retries with a model from another provider, and the request is billed at the fallback model's rate.
Auto-save on blur. Profile fields save automatically when you click outside (blur). There is no save button.
Change history. The bottom of the Profile tab shows who changed the employee's details and when, since the employee itself can also rewrite its own persona.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does changing the personality affect the quality of work? A: No. Persona changes the style of communication (background, personality) but not the quality or accuracy of the output.

Q: Can I set a different AI model for each employee? A: Not today. The AI model, thinking depth, and actions per turn are set once at Settings > AI Config and apply to every employee in the workspace.

Q: What happens if the AI provider goes down? A: The gateway automatically retries with a fallback model from a different provider. You are billed at the fallback model's rate, not the original.

Q: Can I change the employee's name? A: Yes. Edit the Name field in the Identity section of the Profile tab. The change takes effect immediately.

Q: What does "Actions per Turn" mean? A: It limits how many actions (tool calls, reads, searches) an employee can perform in a single response. Higher values allow longer, multi-step work.

Q: Can I upload a custom photo for my employee? A: Yes. Click the avatar on the Profile tab and upload a JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP file up to 5 MB.