What agents are
Some agents are background agents — they watch for the events they monitor, prepare a suggestion when one happens, and add it to a review queue. A background agent doesn’t act in real time and doesn’t act on its own — it waits for you. Others are on-demand — you invoke them yourself (for example, Warm Intro runs from Chat when you ask).The shared trust model
- Suggest — the agent prepares a draft, a summary, or a set of field updates, with its reasoning and source.
- Review — the suggestion waits for you in the agent’s Activity queue. Nothing is applied yet.
- Approve — only the items you approve are written to the CRM.
Where your agents live
Agents live under Ascend in the left navigation (a separate top-level item from Chat). The Ascend area has three tabs:
- Agent Activity — the queue of suggestions waiting for you. Start here.
- Activity History — what the agent has already done, and the detail behind any one item.
- Agents — where agent names appear, and where you turn Monitoring on or off for each background agent.
The launch lineup
Four agents, each with a different way of working. All require Scale, Advanced, or Enterprise. Only Meeting Prep and Data Update are background agents with a Monitoring toggle; Warm Intro runs on demand from Chat; Document Synthesis is coming soon.
Meeting Prep
A background agent that prepares a pre-meeting brief for each of the day’s external meetings (web app only at launch), on your “Start your day” / “Ready for you” dashboard and in the Agent Activity feed. It pulls relationship history, the last interaction and how recent it was, who’s engaged, deal/pipeline context, and recent company news. Nothing to apply — open it with View Brief. Control it with the Monitoring toggle in Ascend → Agents.Data Update
A background agent that keeps your CRM current. It fires when a meeting note is created, reads the note, and proposes Suggested Field Updates. Expanding Review shows each proposed field with its scope, Current Value (and when it was last updated), and the Suggested Value. Open View Meeting Note to check the source. It can cover any editable field, global or list-specific — including dropdowns and Ranked Dropdown fields (Status, Stage, Priority), appending rather than overwriting multi-value fields. One suggestion set per meeting, to the note creator. External meetings only. Control it with the Monitoring toggle in Ascend → Agents.Affinity Notetaker is the primary source — it takes the note and attaches it to the meeting automatically, which is what triggers the suggestions. Notetaker feeds the agents but isn’t part of Ascend. (No email, Slack, mobile, or push notifications at launch.)
Warm Intro (on demand from Chat)
Not a background agent — you invoke it on demand from Chat. Ask “who can introduce me to someone at [Company]?” and Affinity AI returns ranked intro paths from your relationship data and can draft outreach for you to send yourself (it never sends). Also available as theaffinity-warm-intro MCP skill. See Warm Intros in AI Chat and MCP.
Document Synthesis (coming soon)
Coming soon — you’ll see its card, but it isn’t functional at launch and has no toggle yet. When it ships it will watch for inbound PDF pitch decks, teasers, and CIMs, summarize them, and post a summary to Agent Activity. See Document Synthesis.How AI Chat fits alongside agents
AI Chat is a conversational interface to your CRM, a separate item in the left navigation (a docked side panel) — distinct from Ascend. Ask questions in natural language with cited sources. Beyond answering, Chat can take four confirm-before-execute write actions: Update Field, Add to List, Create Note, and Create Reminder. Reading your agent briefs in Chat, and reviewing Suggested Field Updates in Chat, are fast-follows after launch — not part of GA. Triggering an agent to run from the conversation isn’t in Chat either; the agents run automatically on their own.Getting access
All agents require Scale, Advanced, or Enterprise. Affinity Notetaker — the source for the Data Update agent’s post-meeting suggestions — extends to Scale and above. Once an admin enables Ascend Agents at Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI, turn on the background agents (Meeting Prep, Data Update) with the Monitoring toggle in Ascend → Agents. Warm Intro runs on demand from Chat; Document Synthesis is coming soon.How to stay in control
- Review before it’s real. Suggestions sit on Agent Activity until you act. Nothing writes until you click Apply Updates.
- It shows its work. Each suggestion names what it’s proposing and the source (View Meeting Note).
- It respects permissions. An agent only sees and changes what your account already can.
- It won’t send on your behalf. No agent sends email or outreach without your explicit approval.
- You control which agents run. An admin enables/disables Ascend Agents for the org at Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI; each user toggles Monitoring per background agent on Ascend → Agents.
Common questions
- Will an agent change my CRM on its own? No — everything waits in Activity for your review.
- Who can see an agent’s suggestions? They’re yours to review. Once approved, the result appears on the record like any edit your team can see.
- What if I ignore a suggestion? Nothing happens — unreviewed suggestions stay in Activity.
- Can I turn an agent off? Yes — each user via Monitoring on Ascend → Agents; an admin for the whole org at Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI.
- How is this different from AI Chat? Chat answers live and takes four confirm-before-execute actions; background agents work on their own time and bring results back for you to review in Ascend.
Affinity AI can make mistakes. Review each suggestion before approving it.