Create Your First Agent
An agent in NEXUS is a persistent identity — a name, a persona, and its own on-disk memory — independent of any terminal. Creating one never starts a process; running a shell is a separate, later step (see Run your first session).
If you clicked Get started during first launch, you already have one agent, created for you as a starting point. This page creates one deliberately, so you understand the three ways to do it.
1. Open Agents and pick a creation path
Click Agents in the rail. Three actions create a new agent:
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| New Agent | Creates the agent immediately with a placeholder name and a generic persona, and opens its page — there's no separate setup form. You edit its name and everything else directly there. |
| Create with AI | Opens a terminal running one of your configured CLI agents and starts a scripted interview: it asks, one question at a time, for a name, its role or purpose, its focus areas, its communication style, and any tools or skills it should use — then recaps what it understood and asks you to confirm or correct before finalizing anything. |
| Import Agent… | Opens a file picker for a previously exported agent definition. You can select more than one file at once; importing the same file twice never collides, since each import gets its own name. |
For a first agent, New Agent is the fastest way to see the rest of this page.
You will see: a new tile in the roster with a placeholder name, and its detail page open and ready to edit.
2. Fill in its persona
On the agent's own page, five fields describe how it behaves and what it's for: Role, Focus, Communication style, Tools (a checklist of command-line tools NEXUS detected on your system), and Context Tags. Give it a real name too.
You will see: every field applies as you type — there is no Save button on this page.
3. Set its autonomy mode
The Mode picker controls how independently the agent acts: Auto, Approval (the default), Plan, or Plan (collect). Whichever you choose, destructive actions always pause for your approval regardless of mode — that boundary doesn't move.
4. Optionally set a default provider and working directory
Default AI provider picks which command-line AI runs automatically when you start a shell for this agent; the default, None (bare shell), opens a plain shell you type into yourself instead. Working directory sets where new shells for this agent launch. You can leave both unset for now and come back later.
5. Check what it can do before you hand it work
Hover the agent's tile in the roster, or right-click it and choose Mesh Capabilities…, to see its capability card: the skills and extensions it currently declares to the mesh. An agent you haven't configured yet may have little or nothing declared — that's expected until you attach skills or turn on mesh capabilities for it.
Next
Continue to Run your first session.
Where to go next
- Agents guide — every persona and autonomy field, mesh capabilities, attached skills and files, and the roster's bulk actions.
- Settings reference — the same fields, in the contextual settings panel.