> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.salestools.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Core Concepts: How Salestools AI Sales Agents Work

> Understand Sally, AI SDRs, Automations, ICP and Persona profiles, Playbooks, and CoPilot vs. AutoPilot before you build your first agent.

Before you build your first agent, it helps to understand the core building blocks of Salestools. Every outreach campaign you run lives inside an **AI Agent** — a configured, autonomous worker that finds the right people, writes personalised messages, and executes a multi-step cadence on your behalf. This page explains what each concept means and how the pieces fit together, so you can launch with confidence and tune intelligently as you go.

## Key terms

**Sally** is your AI copilot. She powers every piece of AI-driven work in Salestools — researching prospects, drafting personalised messages across email and LinkedIn, managing replies, and surfacing the one approval that matters most on your Dashboard each day. Sally writes per lead, not per template, so every message is tailored to that specific person's role, company, and context.

**AI SDR** is a guided, seven-step wizard that configures a complete sales agent for you. You work through Persona, Audience, Voice, Channels, Playbook, and Guardrails in sequence, and a live preview rail on the right updates as you go. AI SDR is the fastest path to a working agent — best when you want results quickly without hand-building a cadence.

**Automation** is the hands-on cadence editor. You wire each step yourself — channel, message, delay, condition, and exit rule — with full control over timing, branching, and prompts. Automation is best when you want to control every detail of the sequence or build something the AI SDR wizard doesn't cover.

Both AI SDR and Automation deploy into the same **AI Agents** list, where each running agent enrolls leads and works them step by step.

**ICP Profile** (Ideal Customer Profile) describes the *companies* you want to reach — industry, company size, location, technology stack, and other firmographic filters. You create and manage ICP profiles in your **AI Library** and link them when building an agent to define which companies get enrolled.

**Persona Profile** describes the *people* you want to reach — their job title, seniority level, and function within a company. Link a Persona profile in the agent builder to narrow enrollment to specific buyer types inside your target companies.

**The four persona roles** — **Decision Maker**, **Champion**, **Influencer**, and **End User** — are how Salestools buckets leads inside a cadence based on their job title. You can give each role its own message prompt so the same step reads completely differently for a CEO than for an analyst, without writing a separate sequence for each.

**Playbook** is a ready-made cadence shape — for example, a 5-touch outbound sequence or a light 3-touch follow-up. Selecting a playbook sets your sequence structure in a single click. Choosing **Custom flow** hands you off to the Automation builder to design the cadence yourself from scratch.

**CoPilot mode** means Sally drafts every message and waits for your approval before anything sends. Use CoPilot when you want full review control, are testing a new audience, or are sending to high-value prospects where precision matters.

**AutoPilot mode** means Sally sends autonomously within the daily caps, quiet hours, and cooldown windows you configure in Guardrails. Use AutoPilot for high-volume prospecting sequences where you trust the messaging and want Sally to work without interruption.

<Info>You can switch an agent between CoPilot and AutoPilot at any time from the agent settings — you don't need to rebuild anything.</Info>

## How AI SDR and Automation compare

|                            | AI SDR                       | Automation                   |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------------- | ---------------------------- |
| **Best for**               | Getting a working agent fast | Full control over every step |
| **Setup style**            | Guided seven-step wizard     | Manual step-by-step editor   |
| **Branching / conditions** | Via playbook shapes          | Full IF/THEN conditions      |
| **Per-persona messages**   | Base prompt applied to all   | Per-persona prompt per step  |
| **Typical user**           | New or occasional builders   | Power users and RevOps       |

Both tools produce the same kind of agent and both support CoPilot and AutoPilot modes.

## Build an agent with AI SDR

The AI SDR wizard walks you through seven steps. A live preview rail on the right updates with your trigger, channels, and estimated daily sends as you go.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the builder">
    Go to **AI Agents → Create AI Agent** in the left sidebar. The Builders area opens on the **AI SDR** tab by default.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set your Persona and Audience">
    On the **Persona** step, name the agent, choose who Sally signs messages as, and link an **ICP profile** and a **Persona profile** from your AI Library to define who gets enrolled. Leave them blank to reach all website visitors.

    On the **Audience** step, preview the people who match your filters. You can pin specific prospects to enroll only them, or leave the audience open to enroll everyone who matches.

    <Tip>No profiles yet? Launch without them and add targeting later, or create an ICP and Persona first in **AI Library → ICP Profiles** and **AI Library → Persona Profiles**.</Tip>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Configure the Voice">
    Pick a tone (formal, conversational, direct, etc.), add words or phrases Sally should never use, and write free-text instructions for how she should sound and what angles to lead with. Click **Save as prompt** to store your voice settings as a reusable prompt, or select a prompt you've saved before. Sally keeps one voice across the whole cadence and adapts the angle automatically based on each lead's persona role.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Pick your Channels">
    Turn on the channels the agent should use — **Email**, **LinkedIn**, **Phone**, or **Calendar** — and set a daily cap per channel. You can also select a reply handler to manage incoming replies automatically; leave it blank and replies route to your inbox for manual handling.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Choose a Playbook">
    Select a cadence shape — for example, *5-touch outbound* or *light 3-touch*. To design the sequence step by step yourself, choose **Custom flow**, which opens the Automation builder with your existing agent context pre-loaded.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set Guardrails and launch">
    On the **Guardrails** step, configure:

    * **Aggressiveness** — drives daily message volume (light / moderate / aggressive)
    * **Cooldown window** — minimum gap between contacts to the same prospect
    * **Business hours only** — restricts sends to working hours in the prospect's timezone
    * **Daily trigger cap** — maximum new prospects enrolled per day

    The live preview updates your estimated sends-per-day as you adjust. Continue to the **Review** step to see a full summary, then click **Save draft** to keep the agent inactive or **Launch** to activate it.

    <Warning>Launching activates a real agent that sends real outreach within your guardrails. If you want to inspect drafts first, deploy in **CoPilot** mode — nothing sends until you approve each message.</Warning>
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Build a cadence in Automation

The Automation builder gives you a vertical cadence you control step by step. Toggle the header between **Plain English** (a readable summary of the flow) and **Flow** (the editable step cards), and choose **CoPilot** or **AutoPilot** before activating.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the Automation tab">
    Go to **AI Agents → Create AI Agent**, then switch to the **Automation** tab in the Builders area.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Configure the trigger and audience">
    Click **Configure** on the **Enter when** card to set a data source — Find Leads, My Leads, My Companies, Website visitors, or Intent signals — and apply filters. The **Audience** tab groups matching leads into the four persona roles with counts. Check specific people to pin them, or leave the audience open to enroll everyone who matches.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add and arrange steps">
    Add a step for each touch, pick its channel (email, LinkedIn invite, LinkedIn message, call, and more), and set a delay (send now, or after a number of minutes, hours, or days). Reorder steps with the up and down arrows. Add **IF/THEN conditions** — replied, connected, not connected, visited, opened, clicked — to branch the flow based on prospect behaviour.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Write the message for each step">
    Open a messaging step's inspector. Select a **persona chip** (Decision Maker, Champion, Influencer, or End User) to write a prompt scoped to that role, or leave none selected to write a base prompt for all leads. Type **/** to insert a variable like the prospect's first name. Open the **Preview** tab to generate the real message Sally would send for that persona and check that it reads as intended.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set exit rules and test">
    In the **Exit rules** panel, choose when the agent should stop for a lead — on email or LinkedIn reply, a booked meeting, a no-reply timeout, or if the lead is already enrolled in another active cadence. Use **Test run** to preview the full cadence against one real lead, and send a test message to yourself before going live.

    <Note>Unsubscribe and hard opt-outs always stop an agent immediately — this exit rule can never be disabled.</Note>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Activate the agent">
    Choose **CoPilot** or **AutoPilot**, then click **Activate**. Your agent appears in the **AI Agents** list and starts enrolling the audience you configured.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## CoPilot vs. AutoPilot at a glance

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="CoPilot Mode" icon="hand" href="/ai-agents/ai-sdr-builder">
    Sally drafts every message and queues it for your approval. Nothing sends until you click **Approve & send**. Use this when testing new audiences, targeting high-value accounts, or any time you want full review control.
  </Card>

  <Card title="AutoPilot Mode" icon="circle-play" href="/ai-agents/ai-sdr-builder">
    Sally sends autonomously within your daily caps, cooldown windows, and business-hours settings. Use this for high-volume sequences where you trust the messaging and want Sally to work without interruption.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Explore the builders

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="AI SDR Builder" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/ai-agents/ai-sdr-builder">
    Step-by-step walkthrough of the full seven-step guided wizard.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Automation Builder" icon="diagram-project" href="/ai-agents/automation-builder">
    Deep dive into hand-building cadences with conditions, delays, and per-persona prompts.
  </Card>

  <Card title="AI Library" icon="books" href="/ai-library/overview">
    Create and manage your ICP profiles, persona profiles, and saved prompts.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Find Leads" icon="magnifying-glass" href="/sales-intelligence/find-leads">
    Search the 240M-record graph to build audiences for your agents.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>