How to Use Built-in Agents

What You Will Learn

This guide shows you how to use via.email's built-in agents — hundreds of pre-built, specialized AI agents that live at their own email addresses. Each one is expert-prompted for a specific task, so you get better results than a generic AI assistant.

What is a built-in agent in one sentence?

A built-in agent is a specialist inbox you can email like a colleague. You send the input once, it applies a fixed expert brief on the back end, and you get an answer tuned for that job. You do not manage prompts in a chat window; you manage outcomes through email.

Browsing the Agent Gallery

Visit via.email/agents to browse all available built-in agents. They are organized across 18+ departments including Sales, Legal, Marketing, HR, Accounting, IT, Customer Support, Teaching, Recruiting, and more.

Each agent listing shows:

• The agent's name and email address
• A short description of what it does
• How to use it

How do I pick the right built-in agent fast?

Start from the department that matches your work, then skim the one-line promise. If two agents look similar, email the narrower one first because its instructions are usually tighter. When nothing fits, use find@via.email to describe the workflow and get a short list of matches.

Using a Built-in Agent

To use any built-in agent, simply email it:

• To: The agent's email address (e.g., summarize@via.email)
• Subject: Optional — some agents use the subject for context
• Body: Your request or the content you want processed

You can also forward an existing email to an agent. For example, forward a long email thread to a summarization agent to get a concise summary.

Examples

• Translate: Email translate.to.spanish@via.email with text in English to get a Spanish translation
• Summarize: Forward a long report to summarize@via.email to get a concise summary
• Extract: Email extract.action.items@via.email with meeting notes to pull out all action items

Adding Agents to Your Collection

If you are on the Premium plan or above, you can add built-in agents to your personal collection. This lets you customize them later using edit@via.email.

To add an agent:

• To: add@via.email
• CC: The built-in agent's email address (e.g., summarize@via.email)

You can add up to 5 agents at once by putting multiple agent addresses in CC.

You will receive a confirmation email listing the agents added to your collection.

Continuing the Conversation

Just like with help@via.email, you can reply to any agent's response to continue the conversation. The agent maintains context within that email thread.

Attaching Files

You can attach files when emailing built-in agents. Supported file types and size limits depend on your plan. See via.email/pricing for details.

Built-in vs. Custom Agents

• Built-in agents are pre-configured by via.email and available to all users. Great for common tasks.
• Custom agents are created by you with your own instructions, tailored to your specific workflow. Available on Premium and above.

If a built-in agent does not quite fit your needs, you can add it to your collection and edit the instructions, or create a custom agent from scratch. On Premium and above, email create@via.email with your instruction in the body and the agent name in the subject. See via.email/guide for the full command list.

Related reading

• Email protocol beats the dashboard for ops leaders who live in threads
• Frontier models pass the hype while your inbox still fails the receipt test
• Try via.email first and skip the AI pilot deck

For quick answers, see our FAQ.