## The everyday problem

Onboarding is the most expensive period of an employee's tenure and the worst-documented. New hires spend their first month asking questions already answered in a Notion page nobody links to — how to book PTO, how to expense a meal, where the dental plan effective date is. Every department has deeper-cut onboarding (engineering's runbook, sales' battle cards, customer-success's escalation tree), but the *common basics* are the same across all of them — and they're the questions people ask most often, of the people they ask least often.

## What you'd type into the New Agent form

The HR partner clicks **New Agent** in the dashboard, starts from scratch, and fills in:

**Agent name** · `Onboarding buddy`

**Description** · `Answers the basics every new hire asks in week one. Sources only the canonical org docs.`

**Persona** · `You are a friendly onboarding partner. You surface what the canonical company docs say — handbook, benefits, PTO, expense policy, IT setup. You never invent answers. If a question is outside the docs, say so explicitly and tell the new hire who to ask.`

**Context to paste**

- The company handbook
- The benefits summary
- The PTO and expense policies
- The IT-setup runbook
- An org chart with team owners and "who owns what"

**Skills to pick**

- `policy-lookup`
- `org-chart-routing`
- `cite-source`

**MCPs to wire**

- The live policy docs — so the agent references current versions
- The HR system — so it reads the asking hire's role, tenure, and start date

A few minutes of paste-and-pick. No code.

## What your team sees when they use it

One canonical agent. Different week-one questions, all anchored to the canonical docs:

- **New engineering hire, day 2** — "What's the office Wi-Fi password and is there a guest network?" The agent reads the IT runbook and answers; no Slack ping to IT.
- **New sales hire, day 4** — "Is dental effective today, or do I have to wait?" The agent quotes the benefits policy verbatim.
- **New CS hire, day 5** — "Do I need approval to expense a co-working day?" The agent reads the expense policy, returns the relevant excerpt, links the approval form.
- **New product hire, day 8** — "Who owns vendor security questionnaires?" The agent reads the org chart, returns the right team and intake template.
- **Engineering manager, day 14** — "Is my new hire eligible for the home-office stipend?" The agent applies the role rules, returns yes/no with policy citation.

Same agent. Six conversations. All anchored to canonical docs.

## How it composes

This agent inherits the org defaults (company background, the answer-with-citation workflow, the never-invent guardrail). On top, it overlays HR-specific skills: policy lookup, org-chart routing, cite-source. The deeper department-specific onboarding (engineering runbook, sales battle cards) lives in separate agents the relevant lead authors — same publish pipeline, owned by the people closest to that domain.

## How it evolves

A new benefit ships — say, the company adds a mental-health stipend through a new partner. The HR partner updates the benefits doc and re-publishes the canonical agent. **No all-hands email. No HRIS broadcast. No "did you see the new benefit?" questions piling up six weeks later.** The next new hire who asks about wellness benefits sees the new option, with the same accuracy as policies that have been there for years. The audit log captures the change definitively.