The Cortex Agentic Assistant uses the following components and concepts:
| Name | Description |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Actions | Actions wrap diverse capabilities (such as playbooks, scripts, and commands) to make them accessible and executable by an agent. You can use out-of-the-box system actions or register new actions. |
| Agent | <p>An agent is a virtual persona that creates and executes domain-specific plans, at your request, to assist in your day-to-day SOC operations. An agent has roles and permissions that provide guardrails. Each agent is assigned a collection of actions that it can use as part of plans.</p><p>The agent chooses the most relevant actions to fulfill a user's request. Agents process user requests, create plans, and orchestrate actions based on their goals and permissions (RBAC and SBAC).</p><p>You can use the following types of agents:</p><ul><li>System agents that are provided for specific use cases.</li><li>Custom agents that users have created.</li></ul><p>Some agents provide relevant chat conversation starters under the chat prompt. For examples of conversation starters, see <a href="../../learn-about-cortex-xsiam/agentic-ai-in-cortex-xsiam/agentic-assistant-use-cases">Agentic Assistant use cases</a>.</p><div data-gb-custom-block data-tag="hint" data-style="info" class="hint hint-info"><p><strong>Note</strong></p><p>Agents are bound by the same rules and robust permissions as a human user. In addition, you can mark actions that make real-world changes in production systems as sensitive, requiring a quick manual review and confirmation, ensuring peace of mind before critical system changes are made.</p></div> |
| Plan | A sequence of actions that run in parallel or sequentially to satisfy a user request. The agent dynamically chooses relevant actions to resolve the prompt. |
| Conversation | A sequence of user requests that maintains context across interactions. |
| Knowledge | In the **Knowledge Center**, you can ground AI agents in your organization's business-specific source of truth by managing internal knowledge sources. You can also leverage built-in Cortex (system) knowledge to provide agents with deep product expertise and technical platform logic. This enables agents to act as context-aware extensions of your team that understand both your internal workflows and the underlying platform. |
| Request | A user request from the agent with an end goal, triggering a plan. |