Agentic workflows, agents, and skills

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated May 7, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Agentic workflows, agents, and skills

    Build Agent enables ServiceNow customers to generate agentic workflows, agents, and skills tailored to their custom applications without building from scratch. This capability transforms business requirements into configured AI artifacts by analyzing existing application context such as tables, roles, business rules, and metadata. To use these features, customers must have Now Assist for App Engine installed and access to ServiceNow Studio or the ServiceNow IDE. Entitlements govern access to agentic workflows, agents, and skills within Build Agent.

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    Key Features

    • Skill Creation: Supports multiple types of skills including FlowAction Now Assist Skills (with inline or explicit scripts), SubFlows, and WebSearch.
    • Agent Creation: Allows building agents using catalog items, conversational topics, flow actions, Now Assist skills, record operations, scripts, search retrieval, subflows, and web search tools.
    • Search Retrieval Tool: Enables knowledge retrieval by configuring search tools scoped to the specific use case. This tool queries search profiles, retrieves relevant sources and fields, and checks for semantic search indexes (requires Australia Patch 3 or higher).
    • Reuse of Existing Components: FlowActions and Subflows used in agents must already exist within the app scope; Build Agent reuses these components rather than creating new ones.
    • Automated Artifact Generation Process: Employs a four-phase pattern—Assess (data model readiness), Analyze (use case identification), Design (architecture proposal), and Build (agent and skill generation)—to create AI artifacts scoped to data models, roles, and ACLs.
    • In-App Agents Compatibility: Generated agents can operate with any custom scoped application, with more effective and domain-specific results when applications have real data, roles, and automation.

    Key Outcomes

    • Accelerated development of AI-powered workflows and agents aligned with your application’s data and security model.
    • Centralized governance via automatic registration of generated agents in AI Control Tower.
    • Simplified deployment through standard update sets, ensuring seamless integration into existing ServiceNow environments.
    • Enhanced targeting and specificity of AI artifacts based on the maturity and configuration of your applications.

    Build Agent can generate agentic workflows, agents, and skills scoped to your custom app. Turn business requirements into configured AI artifacts without building from scratch.

    You must install Now Assist for App Engine to create agentic workflows, agents, and skills. For more information, see Installing Now Assist for App Engine.

    Verify that you have access to ServiceNow Studio or the ServiceNow IDE.
    Note:
    Your entitlements determine whether you have access to agentic workflows, agents, and skills in Build Agent.

    Skills must be published before they can be used as a tool by another skill.

    Build Agent supports the following tool creation:
    Note:
    1. *You can use only FlowActions and Subflows that are already part of your app scope. Build Agent reuses existing FlowActions and Subflows instead of creating new ones.
    2. **When you create an agent that requires knowledge retrieval, Build Agent can configure a search retrieval tool scoped to your use case. The tool queries your existing search profiles to identify the best match, retrieves the associated search sources and return fields, and checks whether semantic search indexes are available.
      Note:
      You must be on Australia Patch 3 or higher to use the search retrieval tool.

    The agentic capability turns business requirements into fully configured agents, skills, and agentic workflows for custom applications. It evaluates existing app context, such as tables, roles, business rules, and metadata, and applies a four-phase pattern to generate artifacts scoped to your application's data model, roles, and ACLs:

    Assess
    Evaluates data model readiness for AI.
    Analyze
    Identifies use cases from existing tables, roles, and flows.
    Design
    Proposes an architecture with a recommended quick-win.
    Build
    Generates agents and skills scoped to the application's data model, roles, and ACLs.

    In-App agents can work with any custom scoped application. Applications with real data, established roles, and defined automation produce more targeted, domain-specific artifacts. Applications with no data or configuration produce agents that aren't scoped to a specific data model.

    Note:
    Generated agents are automatically registered in AI Control Tower for centralized governance, and artifacts deploy through standard update sets.