How Does Agent Script Give Admins More Control?

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joshua Birk, Senior Director of Admin Evangelism at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about how to get started with Agent Script and how it helps admins build better AI agents.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joshua Birk.

What is Agent Script?

Big changes are coming to how admins build AI agents with Salesforce, and so I’ve brought Josh Birk on the pod to help us understand what’s going on with the new Agentforce Builder.

There are backend updates to the Atlas Reasoning Engine, but Agent Script is where the rubber meets the road for admins. It’s a simple, high-level scripting language that lets you create complex instructions and actions for your agent to follow. Agent Script puts the human in the loop for all the little decisions an AI makes, helping you build more predictable and reliable agentic solutions.

If you’re comfortable with coding, you can pop open the hood with Script view, but there’s also a visual Canvas view to help you see how things fit together and make the changes you want. And as always, you can just tell the Agentforce assistant what you want your agent to be able to do, and it’ll list out suggestions for you to accept or decline.

Why can’t I copy my agents into the new Agent Builder?

The biggest question most admins have about the new Agent Builder is why they can’t just copy and paste their old agents into the new system. The answer is that the new version uses a completely different engine: hybrid reasoning. 

Josh uses the example of the transition to Lightning Web Components from Aura and Visualforce. LWC was created to align with modern web standards that simply didn’t exist when these older frameworks were developed.

The same principle applies to the new Agentforce Builder and the addition of Agent Script. The control that it gives you is a result of the hybrid reasoning engine it’s built around.

Don’t panic, learn Agent Script

Josh’s biggest piece of advice is to take things slowly. The agents you’ve built in classic will still work fine, and just like with Visualforce, they’re not going to be sunset anytime soon. “Salesforce does not like taking away people’s toys,” Josh says, “you don’t need to be in a rush to go and recreate your existing agents in the new Agentforce Builder.”

Instead, try building new agents with Agent Script. It’ll give you a better idea of just how much more control and reliability is possible. And once you’ve gotten your feet wet, you’ll have a better idea of what you’ll get when you update your existing agents. As Josh says, “Don’t panic, learn Agent Script.”

There’s more great stuff from my conversation with Josh about Agent Script and the new Agentforce Builder, so be sure to take a listen. And make sure you’re subscribed to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.

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Full show transcript

Mike Gerholdt:
This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, if you’ve ever been wondering why you can’t just copy and paste your old agents into the new version, this episode is for you.

I’m joined by Josh Birk, who recently walked our admin relations team through what’s really changing with Agent Builder and Agentforce. And more importantly, why it matters. We’re going to unpack a little bit of hybrid reasoning, what determinism really means for admins, and how Agent Script gives you even more control without losing all of that magic. So with that, let’s get Josh on the podcast.

So Josh, welcome back to the podcast.

Josh Birk:
Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike Gerholdt:
Well, we know that a few people are vibing now because of the dulcet tones of Josh Birk. So in all honesty, you were in a team meeting last week and you were kind of updating the team on stuff that’s coming out for new products and beta products. And the biggest thing that you always explain is like, so why is this important?

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Mike Gerholdt:
And of course, every now and then you end your little skit with, “Thanks for attending my TED Talk.”

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Mike Gerholdt:
And I remember last week’s meeting, I was like, “Oh man, that’s a podcast. I need to do that.”

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Mike Gerholdt:
Because the way that you would explained what was new with Agent Builder and Agentforce, I was just like, “Oh, that totally makes sense to me.” So this is where we’re at and this is what I was hoping we would talk about.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. And I’ll have to try because I kind of remember getting into a very weird, almost like conspiracy theory level stream of consciousness.

Mike Gerholdt:
Oh, okay. Well, it didn’t feel that way.

Josh Birk:
Good. I think that’s years of experience of thinking in streams of consciousnesses, whatever the plural of that is. So yeah, so I think to kind of recap a little bit, so there were two things that I think are kind of important to consider about the new Agent Builder. One is what we mean by hybrid reasoning and what we mean by determinism. And then the second thing is, where does Agent Script fit into that? So the question we were kind of tackling was, why didn’t we just go back and revise the old builder? Why can’t we just reiterate on it? Why are we starting completely new?

Mike Gerholdt:
And I think you even said, not to interrupt you, but to interrupt you, why can’t I just move my stuff over? Why do I have to rebuild it?

Josh Birk:
And why can’t I just move my stuff over? Why isn’t it just copy and paste? And Agent Script is part of that.
So the original engine wasn’t hybrid, is I think the easiest way to put it. So this came with a conversation with product management where I was trying to describe the differences between the old builder and the new builder. And they’re like, well, let’s … The old builder wasn’t doing anything wrong, so much is that the new builder’s doing something more.

And what the new builder’s doing that is more is that when we say hybrid, when we think of AI, we think of AI being autonomous, making its own decisions. So we had the Atlas reasoning engine that’s like, “Oh, Mike is looking to find a description on a certain account. I’m going to take these actions. I’m going to put them together into a plan and then I’m going to try to make that work.”
What we didn’t have was the human in the loop portion of that. And where Agent Script really comes into play is it allows users to basically be like, “In this scenario, I want you to behave like this.” So when we say hybrid, we mean, yeah, we’re letting the engine kind of do its own magic. But then we’re also applying almost … I don’t want to say flow because that’s such a loaded term for a Salesforce community.

Mike Gerholdt:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
But well, let’s go to the name, right? A script, right? A script that a human can actually control personality, control tone, control behavior. When you see this, do this, when you need to call it human. So kind of giving this very human-friendly dialogue that you can then apply to the agent. And so that’s how we provide more determinism.

So the reason you can’t just copy and paste your old agent into the new agent is the old agent doesn’t have that connection to Agent Script. And so it’s literally missing a piece of the puzzle to run the engine kind of thing.

Mike Gerholdt:
Right. No, I think … I mean, hearing you explain it, sometimes, at least as an admin, I was always like, “Oh, so they just came out with another version because they had to stick another layer of something on.”

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Mike Gerholdt:
Or like a car analogy, they changed the fuzzy dice. But this is, no, no, no, no. We’re really moving from this version, which ran a certain way to an even better version. And that’s the part that I feel like … Because you brought up Flow, I feel like we’ve been through this with Flow.

Josh Birk:
Yeah, totally.

Mike Gerholdt:
We got like a business process … Business management process is what it used to be called. And then that thing went through iterations and then we found a different engine to run it on. And then we had ProcessBuilder for a while and then now we have the new Flow. And it’s like sometime