---
title: "An agent's Overview"
description: "How complete one agent is, what to do next, and the box that teaches it."
source: https://hiy.ai/docs/agent-overview
---

# An agent's Overview

Open an agent — from the **Agents** list or the switcher — and this is the page it lands on, the first of its seven pages: **Overview**, [Activity](/docs/activity), [Profile](/docs/profile), [Knowledge](/docs/knowledge-library), **Skills**, [Tools](/docs/actions) and **Settings**. (A [Team Agent](/docs/team-agents) has six: it keeps no [Activity](/docs/activity).) Everything on them is about **that one agent**: no number covers your account, which is why none carries an "across all 3 of your agents" line the way [your Dashboard](/docs/overview) does.

The Overview is the agent drawn as one calm diagram: what it learns from on the left, the agent in the middle, and what it can do and where it answers on the right. **Press a card** and that part's sheet opens beside the diagram, with every control it had. Waiting questions sit above the diagram, and the setup line shows only while setup is unfinished.

| Card | What it shows | Its quick action | Its sheet holds |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Knowledge** | Its sources and words, what waits to train, lists, what is going stale | **+**: **Web page**, **Upload file**, **Paste text**, **More ways** | The ways to add a source, the waiting list, starting points for a new agent, **Open Knowledge** |
| **The agent** | Its version and when it was last trained, how many topics it covers, this week's story | **Edit**: **Profile**, **Greeting**, **Rules** | Version and **Update agent**, where this agent stands, its guardrails, **Open Profile** |
| **Skills** | Its skills, each with a switch (Preview) | **+**: the skills list | The first skills, the one honest line, **Tell me when it's live** and **All skills** |
| **Tools** | What is built in and how many actions you added | **+**: **Add an action**, **Connect a tool** | The built-in list and **Open Tools** |
| **Channels** | Each place it answers and whether it is live | **+**: **Add a place**, **Copy install code** (Support Agents) | Where it answers, **Change channel template** and **Edit where it answers** |
| **Handover** | When it hands a conversation to a person | **Edit handover rules** | The rules, read-only, and **Edit handover** |

Each quick action opens the same form its own page uses, so the diagram never becomes a second editor. While a [train](/docs/training) runs, the Knowledge card's three marks show **Reading**, **Learning** and **Going live**, and the lines glow on the side that is working; when it lands, a tick shows once on the Knowledge and agent cards. A train that stopped says why on the agent's card, with **Try again**. While changes wait, the Knowledge card's foot reads "2 waiting" with **Train now**.

Three of the panels below — the import, [where this agent stands](#where-this-agent-stands) and [Your hiy](#your-hiy) — carry a **How this works** link that opens the matching section of this page in a new tab, so reading about a panel never costs you the thing you were half way through.

## The header

Three things sit at the top of every agent page, so you never hunt for them:

- **Update agent.** It reads "3 changes to apply · Update agent" while something waits, "Training · Reading" while a [train](/docs/training) runs, "Up to date" when nothing waits and "Train failed" when the last one did not finish. Pressing it opens the **Train** sheet, with the run and what the last train learned.
- **The state menu.** One word says whether the agent is answering people: **Live**, **Off**, **In review** or **Declined**. Its menu holds **Live**, **Approve every reply** (a locked Preview for a Support Agent: you would approve each reply before it sends) and **Off**, which asks you to confirm in the menu. Below those sit the address rows for its kind: **Copy link** and **Open hiy.ai/…** for a personal twin, **Get the embed** for a Support Agent, **Invite a colleague** for a Team Agent.
- **Test.** It opens the dock, **Test · Coach**, beside the page, on every agent page. See [Testing](/docs/testing) and [Coach](/docs/coach). A card on the Overview glows while a Coach change to it is open.

Under the agent's name in the side list, **v1 · History** says which version it answers from. It opens when it was trained and the two histories: **Knowledge changes**, and **Settings history**, a locked Preview.

## While your import runs

Pick your pages on the create flow's third screen and the
[import](/docs/sources) starts there — you don't wait on it, and the flow
doesn't hold you. It reports on
itself here, and this panel is the only place that shows both halves of it.

**There are two jobs, the first one finishing is not "ready", and the second
one waits for you.** An import used to start indexing by itself the moment the
last page landed. It doesn't any more: a site holds plenty you would not want
your agent answering from, and the moment to say so is when you can see what
actually came in. So reading is automatic and indexing is yours to start.
**The one exception is the import that made the agent**: its first train starts
by itself when the read ends (see [A new agent trains
itself](/docs/training#a-new-agent-trains-itself)), so that import goes from
reading straight to indexing, and normally doesn't stop at *Ready when you are*.

| What you see | What is happening | Can it answer yet? |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Reading your pages** | Every page is being fetched and its text pulled out. The count is real: pages walked, out of pages found. | No |
| **Indexing your material** | What was read is being turned into something answers can be built from. This is usually the longer half, and it is the same panel you'll see for any [training](/docs/training) run. | No — it keeps answering from what it already had. A new agent's first train is the exception: it says when your pages answer, before its summary is written |
| **Ready when you are** | The pages are stored and counted, and nothing is folding them in — this is where an import now stops and waits for you. A **Train on these** button is here, and it shows the word count before anything is spent. | No |
| **In, and answering** | Both jobs are done. | Yes |

**Reading fast does not mean ready soon.** On a real import, the reading
finished in about seven minutes and the indexing took another twenty-four. The
panel never says "indexed" until the second job has actually landed — that is
the whole reason it shows two phases instead of one.

**You can close the page.** Both jobs run on our servers. Come back and this
panel picks up where it is; it is not a progress bar that only exists while you
watch it.

**"Ready when you are" is normal, not an error.** It is where every import
ends: the pages are stored and counted, and they go in when you say so. (It is
also what you see when this month's [trains](/docs/training) are used up —
same panel, same pages waiting, and **Update agent** tells you which of the two
you are looking at.)

**Walking away doesn't lose it.** An import you never came back to is stored and
counted like any other waiting change, so nothing is thrown away because a tab
was closed. It stays out of the index until a [train](/docs/training) runs — the
one you press, or the overnight one if you have switched **Train overnight** on.

### What didn't make it

Not every page comes back. A page whose text is drawn by JavaScript often has
nothing readable in the HTML we fetch; a dead link answers nothing at all. Any
page that didn't make it is listed here with its address and a short reason —
grouped, so eleven empty pages read as one fact about your site rather than
eleven separate mysteries.

**Try them again** re-runs just those pages as a fresh import, which waits to
be trained like any other import does. Once a page has been added — by the retry,
or by hand — it stops being listed. The panel stays for a day after the import
finishes so a failure is still there the next morning, then Knowledge and Train
own it.

### What you said you'd also bring

Setting the agent up asks where else your material lives. A site or a channel is
an address we can fetch, so those two are the import above. **Files, what your
assistant knows about you, and your lists can't be fetched for you** — a file
needs uploading, an assistant export needs you to review it fact by fact before
anything is kept, and a list is rows you type.

So they're asked for here instead, right under the import, with a button
straight to the place each one happens. Each disappears the moment you've
brought it, and if you didn't mention any of them there's nothing here at all.

## The setup bar

While setup is unfinished, one line sits above the diagram: **Set up · 3 of 6**, a small bar and the next step as its one press. It covers the six things that turn a new agent into one people are actually talking to.

| Stage | Worth | Done when |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Claim your address | 10% | You made the agent — so nobody ever sees 0% |
| Add one strong source | 30% | One source is in **and read** — a queued import doesn't count yet |
| Ask it a question | 15% | You've tested it in [Test](/docs/testing) |
| Teach it something it missed | 15% | You've saved a correction, or answered a queued question |
| Publish | 20% | It's published **and** cleared review — reachable, not just flipped |
| Share or embed it | 10% | You've shared it, or somebody has had a conversation with it |

**It's a checklist, not a score.** Every point is attached to a step you can name. hiy doesn't grade how *good* your agent is out of 100 — there's no honest denominator for that, which is why [where this agent stands](#where-this-agent-stands) is a sentence and not a number. **If it can't be read, no line is drawn:** a figure nobody could load is not a zero.

**A source counts when it has been read, not when it's queued.** An import creates its rows the moment it starts, long before a single page has come back, so the source step **waits for the read to land** and says *Reading your pages* while it does. The same rule as publishing, for the same reason: the step is there to tell you what your agent can actually do, and it can do nothing with a page nobody has fetched yet. (Reading is only the first of the [two jobs](#while-your-import-runs) — the step ticks after the read, and the import panel above still has indexing to do.)

When all six are done the line is gone and never comes back; the receipt, **Set up · 6 of 6**, moves into the agent card's sheet.

## Set it loose

The same six stages as a list live in the agent card's sheet, with the first unfinished one open and a button that goes straight to where it happens — the setup line's one press is that same step. While nothing is trained yet the list says so instead of offering the next step: press **Update agent** in the header and the steps open up. The exception is an agent whose sources are all held back: there, training cannot help until one is ticked back on, so the list says that instead.

While your first import is still being read, **Add one strong source** stays open and says *Reading your pages — this ticks when the read lands* — with nothing to press beside it, because the read is what ticks it and there is no button that does. Nothing is wrong: the rows are there, they just aren't answerable yet, and a step that ticked while your agent still knew nothing would be telling you to move on.

**Add knowledge** — on the Knowledge card's sheet and in the teach queue below — opens **this agent's own** add form, not the account-wide [Knowledge](/docs/knowledge-library) library. The library has an Add of its own, but what it adds belongs to no agent until one picks it up — so material added there wouldn't answer the step that sent you, and the agent you're standing on would still be waiting for a source.

If the stages couldn't be loaded, the panel says so in one line rather than vanishing — a missing next step you can't see is worse than an error you can.

## Where this agent stands

The agent card's sheet opens on a plain reading — *nothing learned yet*, *not published*, *learning your voice*, *getting there* or *in good shape* — with its **?** and the next step as a button.

## Your hiy

Live, Off and the address are in [the state menu](#the-header); where it shows up is under **Settings › Where it answers**.

## The teach queue

Waiting questions sit above the diagram under **Needs you**: up to two one-line plates, then **Show 4 more**, and **All questions**. With nothing waiting, the block is not there. Unanswered visitor questions land here. Answer one in your own words and it becomes an authoritative correction your agent uses from then on; dismiss it and the question closes without one. Every agent's questions, including the ones you dismissed or answered, are on the [**Unanswered**](/docs/unanswered) page, grouped by what was asked, where a dismissed one can be reopened. **Undo** on a dismissed question puts it straight back, and **All questions** under the queue opens Unanswered for this agent.

**It lives on this page, not on your Dashboard, and that's a correctness fix rather than a tidy-up.** Answering writes a correction against *this* agent. On an account-wide page a pooled queue would have taught whichever agent happened to be selected — so the queue sits on the page that names the agent it belongs to. Your Dashboard's [**Needs you**](/docs/overview) queue still lists what's waiting on every agent; each row opens that agent's page, here.

On Home in the new app every question names its agent, and **Teach it** writes to that agent, so one list can hold several agents' questions safely.

- **Awaiting review, and not approved** — Both states get one line at the top of this page, with the reason under its **?**: who can't reach the agent yet and what actually happens next. Neither promises you an email.

- **Starting points** — With no sources yet, the Knowledge card says *Nothing added yet* and offers **Add a source**; its sheet holds the four ways to start. They go away the moment a source exists.

- **No money on this page** — Your plan, your usage and your trial countdown are account facts, so they live on [your Dashboard](/docs/overview). Four agents each showing the same trial banner is one deadline shouted four times.