Agents in Ptah

Agents in Ptah

Agents are specialized AI workers that Ptah coordinates on your behalf. Each agent has a focused role — writing backend code, reviewing UI, researching a library, managing DevOps pipelines — and a system prompt tuned for that role. Instead of asking one generalist model to do everything, Ptah lets the right expert handle the right slice of work.

Why agents?

A single, unrestricted chat session tends to drift: it forgets the architecture it proposed, mixes up frontend and backend conventions, and loses track of review feedback. Ptah’s agents solve that by giving each concern:

• A dedicated system prompt with domain expertise and guardrails
• A narrow toolset (file access, CLI spawning, browser automation, etc.)
• A clear handoff protocol to other agents in the hierarchy

The result: higher-quality output, fewer hallucinations, and a reviewable trail of who did what.

The 14 built-in agents

Ptah ships with 14 built-in agents covering the full software delivery lifecycle — from planning and architecture through implementation, review, and release. They live in every new workspace and are always available from the agent picker.

Planning & Leadership

project-manager, software-architect, team-leader

Implementation

backend-developer, frontend-developer, devops-engineer

Quality & Review

senior-tester, code-style-reviewer, code-logic-reviewer

Research & Design

researcher-expert, modernization-detector, ui-ux-designer, technical-content-writer

See the built-in agent catalog for the full table of roles, triggers, and typical use cases.

How agents fit together

Ptah uses a three-tier orchestration model:

1. Orchestrator — the top-level agent that plans, decomposes, and delegates.
2. Senior leads — specialists (architect, backend-dev, reviewer, etc.) spawned as sub-agents.
3. CLI helpers — external CLI agents (Codex, Copilot, Cursor, Antigravity, OpenCode, Pi, and ptah-cli) spawned in parallel for bulk or exploratory work.

When to use what

• One-off question → chat directly with the default agent.
• Multi-step feature → let the orchestrator delegate to senior leads.
• Wide, parallel exploration → spawn CLI agents (5 concurrent by default).

Read more in Agent orchestration.

Where agents are stored

Built-in agents are bundled with Ptah. Custom and modified agents are stored per workspace under:

<workspace-root>/.claude/agents/

Each agent is a Markdown file with YAML frontmatter describing its name, description, tools, and system prompt. You can edit these directly or use the in-app editor — see Custom agents.

Next steps

Run the setup wizard

Let Ptah analyze your project and generate a tuned agent roster. Start here →

Browse the built-ins

See all 14 built-in agents and when to reach for each. Catalog →

Spawn CLI agents

Parallelize work with Copilot, Codex, and ptah-cli. CLI agents →

Sync to your CLIs

Push your Ptah agents to Copilot, Codex, and Cursor. Sync →