Dispatches
Build · Agents

Deploy agents that execute tasks and cite every step

Give Athena a job, system access, and approval steps—get finished documents, spreadsheets, and databases back with full attribution and rollback.

In production with a global professional services firm for over a year, thousands of users

SESSIONReconcile these three AP exportsagainst Oracle and flag anythingunpaid over 30 days.Done. Flagged items, all cited tosource rows.AP_reconciliation.xlsx412 cells · flaggedAthena · 2 min ago
Fig. 01A request in Spaces becomes a finished sheet with citations and attribution
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA
  • Runs in your VPC, on-prem, or air-gapped
  • In production with a global professional services firm for over a year, thousands of users
  • 600+ tools
  • 60+ models with zero data retention
  • 150+ connectors
The problem

Chat answers. You still do the work.

A copilot summarizes the contract. Someone still updates the tracker, drafts the email, files the document, and tells finance. The answer was the easy part. The handoffs are the job.

Most enterprise AI stops at the chat window because it cannot touch the systems where work actually lives, and because nobody can see what it did afterward. So it stays a research tool, and the tracker stays manual.

Answers are cheap. Finished work is not.

How it works

Three steps. The third is review.

  1. Give the agent the job the way you would give it to a new hire. A paragraph, a forwarded email, a voice note from the airport. Attach the files or point it at the systems.

  2. Athena plans, works, and asks when it must. It writes a visible task plan you can edit mid-run, pulls from your warehouse and documents with your permissions, and stops at any step you mark for approval.

  3. You review, not redo. Every output carries citations to the exact page, cell, or query. The Activity Monitor shows what changed, when, and why. Keep it, edit it, or roll back one range.

01Task inplain …chat · email ·voice · SMS02Athena planseditable tasklist03Works inyour systemsOffice · SQL ·browsera person approves04Humanapprovesin Slack,Teams, or app05Finishedoutputcited ·attributedEvery output carries citations to the exact page, cell, or query
Fig. 02Three steps: give the job, Athena plans and works, you review not redo
People and agents

What people and agents each do

Agents. A workspace agent for everyone, personal agents you can rename, and custom agents with their own email, phone, calendar, and permissions. Over 600 tools available, 60+ models, sub-agents on demand.

Sessions. Conversations with an agent from any surface: web, phone, text, email, Slack, Teams, Office, Chrome. One memory that follows you between them.

CapabilityPeople canAgents canTogether
AgentsName one, give it skills and access. New agents need an authorized builder.Take requests from any channel, split work across sub-agents, pick the tool and model.Same session, same file. Anything consequential waits for a person.
SessionsAsk, steer, and correct in plain language; pick up where you left off anywhere.Remember context across surfaces; run long jobs and report back.Invite teammates into the same session; everyone sees the same thread.

Anything a person can do here, an agent can do with the same permissions, and both land in the same audit trail.

Capabilities

Email, SMS, calendar, and full desktop

It has an inbox, a number, and a calendar.

Forward a data room to the agent's email address and get a cited first-draft memo back. Text it one line from the gate and get the number, the file, and who changed it. Invite it to the call; afterward it runs the follow-ups you told it to. Customers stop opening an app and start delegating.

Where's the Q3 compmodel and what changedsince Friday?Q3_comp_model_v8.xlsxin Finance sharedfolderQ3_comp_model_v8…12 cells changed
Fig. 03Text the agent from anywhere and get the file, the answer, and attribution

It operates the whole desktop.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Jupyter, SQL, and a governed browser, all rebuilt so an agent can drive them and a human can watch. Spreadsheets over a million rows. Decks in your template. Databases created from a CSV in seconds. When there is no API, it uses the browser, recorded and attributable.

AthenaWordExcelPowerPointJupyterSQLBrowserCSVDatabasesAll rebuilt so an agent can drive them and a human can watch
Fig. 04Athena operates Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Jupyter, SQL, and a governed browser

It works with your permissions, not new ones.

Athena inherits each user's rights from the source system in real time. If you cannot see the folder, the agent cannot either. Files stay where they live. If the permission service is unreachable, the action does not run.

Agent on behalfof AnalystRead Finance shared folderCHECKED AGAINST THE SOURCESharePointSnowflakeSalesforceAction blocked forSalesforce dataIf the permissionservice isunreachable, theaction does not run
Fig. 05Athena inherits your permissions in real time and fails closed

It remembers, and it gets better with correction.

Long-term memory across sessions. Skills (from the Skills Library) capture how your team does a task once so every agent does it that way. Each correction a human makes is a trace your organization owns.

Initial taskAnalystMonthly closechecklistFirst runAthenaCompleted witherrorsCorrectedControllerFixed three stepsSkill savedAthenav2 · every agentuses itLong-term memory across sessions. Each correction is a trace you own.
Fig. 06Skills capture how your team does a task once; corrections become traces

It asks before it acts where you tell it to.

Approval steps, hard budgets per run in dollars or model calls, and time-travel snapshots after every message. High autonomy is safe when the work is reversible.

Athena wants tosend 14 emails to re-engaged accountsEstimated cost $3.1014 recipients from Q2 segmentTemplate: Brand voice skill appliedWAITING FOR A PERSONApprove to send, Edit to revise, Reject to stopHard budgets per run · reversible after approval
Fig. 07Approval steps with cost estimates before consequential actions run
What customers say
“He wrote the entire stuff. By itself. And I was there, and I was thinking, alright. If I had to write all this stuff, I mean, I would've spent days, days, days.”
Manufacturing analyst · A global manufacturer
“I send that to the programmer and he said, alright. I read your file. I copied the section of the code because he has the right interface, and it works. Wow. Just like magic.”
Manufacturing analyst · A global manufacturer
“Digital worker, it gets spun up, it gets given access to the toolkits that it needs. It gets given access to the data that it needs. Just exists for the period it needs to exist to perform the task. And then it gets torn back down again afterwards.”
Audit lead · A global professional services firm
“I like that direction, that concept of the agent is the agent. It becomes an entity in its own right with its own ownership and its own missioning, and you get rid of the gray area and the blurry lines.”
Audit lead · A global professional services firm
“A lot of people are telling us that, oh, I sold in this package because of this info... I secured this distribution because of the selling assistance help.”
Sales enablement lead · A global CPG provider
“I am not a programmer. I cannot read a line of program in SQL or anything... The only thing that I'm doing is just writing prompts.”
Manufacturing analyst · A global manufacturer
“I finally got a chance to play around with the computer asset and build out the chatbot you mentioned. It was really impressive.”
Marketing lead · An AmLaw 100 firm
“So we use the SDK, and we write that in Python, and it calls Athena majority by API. The results appear in the interface itself.”
Legal technology team · A global law firm
“You guys are functioning better because the harness is tested for a longer period of time against enterprise customers.”
Analytics lead · A Fortune 500 retailer
“It's like I'm running analysis that would have taken us, like, maybe a week, two. And thirty, forty minutes.”
Sales intelligence analyst · A global CPG provider

Verbatim from customer calls. Customers anonymized.

Platform

Agents on one platform

Agents handle an individual assignment: read these sources, build this comparison, explain this figure.
Workflows (Agent Operating Procedures) repeat a defined process on a schedule or trigger, with review and delivery steps you configure.
Applications give the many a focused interface to the work, included in Athena services.

Start with the agent. Most teams define their first repeatable workflow within the first week.

01Agentindividual assignment02Workflow (AOP)repeatable process, scheduled ortriggered03Applicationfocused interface, no per-seatlicenseThe same primitives power all three. Start with the agent, find the workflow inside a week
Fig. 08One platform: agents for assignments, workflows for process, apps for scale
Governance

Security and deployment

  • Managed cloud, your VPC on GCP, Azure, or AWS, on-prem, air-gapped, GovCloud. Same product in each.

  • 60+ models, zero data retention with every provider, no training on your data, bring your own keys.

  • SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA. Data residency per workspace.

  • Every save attributed to a human or an agent. Diffs. Selective rollback.

What to plan for

Athena needs to learn your business before it is useful. Most teams are up and running quickly; we typically run a full on-site onboarding for the first workflow. After that, your builders do most of it.

FAQ

What is an Athena agent?

A digital worker that researches, analyzes, drafts, and takes action across your systems, and shows its sources for every step.

How much can agents do on their own?

As much as you allow. You mark which steps need a person's approval.

What if an agent gets something wrong?

Every change is attributed and can be rolled back individually.

What does an agent have access to?

Only what the person or service it works for can already access.

One platform underneath

AGS · Athena Governance System

Records every change by a person or an agent, rolls back one contributor's edits without losing anyone else's, and keeps the model, instructions, and sources behind each agent action.

Palladium · deployment

How the platform is deployed: Athena's managed cloud, your cloud on AWS, GCP, or Azure, on-prem, air-gapped, or GovCloud. Same platform in every option.

How it fits together

Build, Work, and Data on top; 150+ connectors and every surface in and out; one map of the whole platform.

The rest of the platform

Related products and stories

Hire Athena as you would a new hire.

Bring one recurring task, a sample input, and an example of work you would accept. We scope the first workflow with you, agree the review points, and hand it over.