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What is an agent

An agent is a virtual data analysis assistant you configure in AskTable. Connect it to data sources and attach skills, and it can answer data questions in natural language — understanding your question, querying the data, and giving you a conclusion. The agent is the core unit you interact with. Skills, channels, and scheduled tasks — covered next — all revolve around the agent.

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What an agent can do

  • Understand natural-language questions and locate the relevant tables and fields
  • Generate and run SQL to query data
  • Run Python for complex calculations and data processing
  • Turn results into charts
  • Ask you a follow-up question when something is unclear
  • Search the web for public data (when enabled)
  • Remember key information across conversations (when enabled)
Which abilities are on is controlled by the agent’s Capabilities, described below.

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What makes up an agent

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Create from a template

AskTable ships with 9 agent templates, each preloaded with a set of skills suited to a scenario — for example: Retail Store Analyst, E-commerce Monitor, Financial Analyst, Market Insights Analyst, User Growth Analyst, and Executive Assistant. Creating from a template prefills the name, description, and skills — you just pick your own data sources. You can also start from Blank. Templates are read-only; the agent you create from one is fully editable.

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How skills, channels, scheduled tasks, and embedding relate

Four companion concepts revolve around the agent:

Skills

Give the agent reusable analysis methods.

Channels

Let users talk to the agent straight from IM tools like Feishu.

Scheduled tasks

Run the agent on a schedule and push the results.

Embedding

Drop the agent into your own website as an iframe for anonymous visitors.
In short: skills decide what the agent knows, channels and embedding decide where users reach it, and scheduled tasks make it work on its own.

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Frequently asked questions

Q: Can an agent use multiple data sources? A: Yes. An agent can access all the data sources you configure for it. Q: Can I use an agent without skills? A: Yes. Skills are an enhancement. Without them the agent can still query data, draw charts, and run Python — it just lacks the preset analysis methods. Q: Can I edit a template directly? A: Templates are a read-only starting point. Once you create your own agent from one, the name, data sources, skills, and capabilities are all adjustable.