> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.interactive.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides.md).

# Guides

- [Quickstart](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/quickstart.md): Build your first agent on the InteractiveAI platform with the iai CLI: author one policy and one routine, stand up a tool server, deploy the agent, and talk to it through the chat UI or the SDK.
- [Authoring policies](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/authoring-policies.md): How to write policies that match when they should, act as intended, and don't fight your routines — patterns, anti-patterns, and a review checklist.
- [Authoring routines](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/authoring-routines.md): Building routines node by node: the golden rule, transitions and branching, tool chains, loops, common patterns, anti-patterns, and the pre-submit checklist.
- [Authoring autonomous routines](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/authoring-autonomous-routines.md): Build a typed automation end to end: schemas, the terminal emit\_output rule, timeouts, webhooks, triggering, and receiving the callback.
- [Connecting tools](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/connecting-tools.md): Stand up an MCP tool server, secure it, declare it in the manifest, and design tools the agent calls correctly.
- [Setting up the knowledge base](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/knowledge-base-setup.md): Provision retrieval grounding: a pgvector collection the agent searches directly, or your own HTTP search endpoint. Includes indexing contract and verification steps.
- [Integration overview](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/integration-overview.md): The map of every way traffic flows between your systems and an agent — SDK conversations, event delivery, autonomous triggers and callbacks, third-party webhooks, and tool calls — with auth and links
- [Integrating the SDK](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/integrating-the-sdk.md): Connect any channel — a web UI, Zendesk, Slack, an IVR — to a running agent with the InteractiveAI Python SDK: sessions, messages, both event delivery modes, handover, and production patterns.
- [Deploying](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/deploying.md): The platform deploy lifecycle: prepare content and a manifest, declare the secret bundle, deploy on the InteractiveAI platform, and verify — plus updating, scaling, and a pre-flight checklist.
- [Observability](https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides/observability.md): Traces, structured logs, trace naming with your business identifiers, the retry-fallback signals, and the grep recipes that answer "what did the agent do?".


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# Agent Instructions
This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com.

## Querying This Documentation
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Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter, and the optional `goal` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.interactive.ai/agents/guides.md?ask=<question>&goal=<endgoal>
```

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`goal` is optional and describes the broader end goal you are ultimately trying to accomplish on behalf of the user. GitBook uses it to tailor the answer towards what is most useful for that goal.

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Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.