Autonomous Agents

Build agents that run without per-request prompting. Automations, multi-agent orchestration, cross-agent invocation, and Autopilot patterns, unified.

"Autonomous" in Taskade means agents that run without a human in the loop for every step. You have four building blocks to compose these systems: Automations, Orchestration Mode, Cross-Agent Invocation, and Autopilot.

This page is a developer's guide to combining those primitives.

Table of Contents

• The Four Building Blocks

• Pattern: Scheduled Agent Task

• Pattern: Event-Triggered Agent

• Pattern: Multi-Agent Team

• Pattern: Self-Invoking Chain

• Monitoring and Observability

• Plan Gating

• Related

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The Four Building Blocks

Primitive	What it does	When to use
Automations	Trigger-driven workflows (schedule, webhook, form, event)	Most "do this when that happens" use cases
Orchestration Mode (Agent Teams)	Coordinator agent delegates to specialist agents	Multi-step tasks needing distinct expertise
Cross-Agent Invocation	An agent calls another agent as a tool	Specialist pipelines without your app orchestrating
Autopilot	AI-driven execution that self-plans and self-corrects	Open-ended exploratory tasks

All four are composable. Real systems often combine two or three.

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Pattern: Scheduled Agent Task

A time-based trigger fires an automation that prompts an agent and routes the output somewhere.

Build it

1. In the Automation builder, add a Schedule trigger (daily, weekly, cron).

2. Add an Ask Agent action and pick your agent.

3. In the prompt, reference trigger data via variables ({{run.date}}).

4. Add an output action (Slack, email, create task).

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Pattern: Event-Triggered Agent

An external event (webhook, form submission, task completion) fires an agent-driven flow.

Example: customer feedback triage

1. Webhook trigger receives inbound form submission.

2. Agent classifies sentiment and extracts key topics.

3. Flow routes:

   • Negative + urgent → create a support ticket.

   • Feature request → append to the feedback project.

   • Positive → thank-you email automation.

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Pattern: Multi-Agent Team

A coordinator agent delegates work to specialist agents. Each specialist has its own knowledge, tools, and persona.

Orchestration modes

• Auto — Coordinator picks which specialist to delegate to based on the task.

• Everyone — Every specialist responds; coordinator synthesizes.

• Orchestrate — Coordinator runs a structured handoff plan.

Programmatic use

// Your app prompts the coordinator; the team resolves internally
const res = await fetch("https://www.taskade.com/api/v2/promptAgent", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.TASKADE_TOKEN}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    spaceId: SPACE_ID,
    agentId: COORDINATOR_ID,
    prompt: "Produce a blog post on our Q2 launch, ready to publish.",
  }),
});
const { summary } = await res.json();

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Pattern: Self-Invoking Chain

An agent can call another agent as a tool. This lets specialist pipelines run without your app orchestrating each step.

// Agent A is configured with Agent B as a tool.
// Your app only talks to Agent A.

const res = await fetch("https://www.taskade.com/api/v2/promptAgent", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.TASKADE_TOKEN}`,
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    spaceId: SPACE_ID,
    agentId: AGENT_A_ID,
    prompt: "Research the latest on X and draft a blog outline",
  }),
});
const { summary } = await res.json();

// Under the hood:
//   Agent A (coordinator) → calls Agent B (researcher) as a tool
//   Agent B returns findings → Agent A writes the outline
//   A single response returns to your app

Cross-agent invocation shifts orchestration inside Taskade. Your app stays simple; agents handle the delegation.

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Monitoring and Observability

Per-run details

Every automation run has a Run Details tab showing:

• Step-by-step execution log

• Inputs and outputs per step

• Errors with context

• Agent credits consumed

Usage analytics

• Per-agent usage analytics — see which agents consume the most credits

• Workspace activity log — credit pack purchases, configuration changes

• Automation status badges — quick visual indicator of health

Errors that don't retry

Taskade's automation engine distinguishes transient from permanent errors.

• Transient (timeouts, 5xx) — auto-retried with backoff.

• Permanent (invalid credentials, 400 errors) — fail fast, no retry, notification raised.

This prevents runaway credit spend on a broken connection.

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Plan Gating

Feature	Free	Pro	Business+
Automations (basic triggers + actions)	Limited	✓	✓
Multi-agent teams	—	Limited	✓
Cross-agent invocation	—	✓	✓
Autopilot	—	✓	✓
Hosted MCP v2 (outbound connectors)	—	—	✓

See pricing for the authoritative gating per plan.

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Related

Action API v2 ReferenceSDK CookbookLong-Term MemoryMulti-Agent CollaborationAutopilotAutomations Overview