PlainAgent / AI agent examples

AI agent examples

These are ten AI agents a small business or team can build without code. They are common patterns, not case studies: for each one you get what starts it, what it decides, what it does, and where a person stays in charge. Every example links to a free template with a full spec and a system prompt you can copy.

What makes these agents, not chatbots

A chatbot waits for someone to type. Each example below starts on its own, from an email, a form, a calendar event, a file or a schedule, and then decides something before it acts: which label fits, whether a request meets your policy, which items in a transcript are real tasks. That decision step is what makes it an agent rather than a fixed automation. If you want the conversational kind, see AI chatbot examples, and for the difference in more detail, AI agent vs chatbot.

10 AI agent examples

1. Inbox triage agent

• Starts when: A new email arrives.
• Decides: Reads the sender, subject and body, and picks exactly one label from the list you wrote, with a one-line definition for each.
• Does: Applies the label and saves a draft reply for routine messages.
• A person steps in: Drafts only, never sent automatically. Anything urgent, legal or personal stays for you.

Open the inbox triage agent template

2. Refund and return triage

• Starts when: An email in your support inbox mentions a refund, return or cancellation.
• Decides: Checks the request against your policy rules and the order data.
• Does: Labels the email, drafts the reply and posts a summary to your team channel.
• A person steps in: Missing order data, amounts over a limit you set, and any mention of chargebacks or legal action go to a person.

Open the refund and return triage template

3. Lead qualifier

• Starts when: Someone submits your contact or demo form.
• Decides: Scores the lead only from the form answers, against ideal-customer criteria you wrote as rules.
• Does: Writes a note to your CRM and alerts sales when the score is high.
• A person steps in: Large or strategic accounts, and messages that ask a direct question, go to a salesperson.

Open the lead qualifier template

4. Meeting prep brief

• Starts when: A new calendar event is booked with an outside guest.
• Decides: Looks up what your CRM already knows about the person and the company.
• Does: Sends you a five-bullet brief, with CRM facts kept apart from anything inferred.
• A person steps in: Nothing to approve; it only informs you.

Open the meeting prep brief template

5. Meeting notes to tasks

• Starts when: A transcript is ready from your meeting recorder.
• Decides: Picks out decisions and the action items someone actually agreed to.
• Does: Creates tasks in your task tool and posts a summary to the team channel.
• A person steps in: Items with no owner go to the meeting organiser. Unknown owners and dates stay blank.

Open the meeting notes to tasks template

6. Invoice data extraction

• Starts when: An invoice PDF arrives by email or lands in a folder.
• Decides: Copies the fields exactly as printed and returns null for anything it can't see.
• Does: Adds a row to a spreadsheet and flags rows it's unsure about.
• A person steps in: Rows where the totals don't add up, or confidence is low, wait for a person.

Open the invoice data extraction template

7. Weekly report

• Starts when: Every Friday afternoon.
• Decides: Reads five to eight numbers from your tools and compares them with last week's report.
• Does: Posts or emails a short plain-English summary.
• A person steps in: A person reads it before it goes beyond the team. It says 'no data' rather than guessing a number.

Open the weekly report template

8. Competitor monitor

• Starts when: A weekly schedule.
• Decides: Fetches a list of competitor pages (pricing, changelog, homepage) and compares each with last week's copy.
• Does: Sends a summary of what changed in the text.
• A person steps in: Informational only. No guesses about strategy unless clearly labelled.

Open the competitor monitor template

9. Research agent

• Starts when: You type a question.
• Decides: Searches the web, reads the pages and keeps facts apart from opinions.
• Does: Writes a report with a source link for every claim, plus notes on what it couldn't confirm.
• A person steps in: You check the sources before you use the result.

Open the research agent template

10. Voice memo to tasks

• Starts when: A voice memo is saved to a folder or sent to a chat.
• Decides: Transcribes it and pulls out the tasks you mentioned.
• Does: Adds them to your task app, with dates only if you said them aloud.
• A person steps in: Anything unclear goes to an 'inbox' list for you to sort.

Open the voice memo to tasks template

Which one to build first

Start with an agent that can only report or draft. The weekly report, the competitor monitor and the meeting prep brief can't send anything to a customer or change a record, so a wrong answer costs you a minute of reading. Once one of those has run cleanly for a few weeks, move to an agent that drafts for you, like inbox triage or refund triage, and keep a person approving every draft. Agents that write to your CRM or task tool come after that, when you trust the output.

Pick the one that matches a job you already do every week. An agent for a task you do once a quarter is hard to test and easy to forget.

What all ten have in common

• One job. Each does a single, narrow thing. Narrow agents are easier to test and fail in fewer ways.
• Few tools. Most need two or three actions, such as apply a label, create a draft, add a row.
• Written rules. "Copy values exactly as printed", "never send automatically", "don't invent due dates". The rules do more for quality than the choice of model.
• A handoff. Each one says exactly when a person takes over.

To turn any of these into your own agent, work through how to build an AI agent, or fill in the free agent planner. If you'd rather start from a ready-made n8n or Zapier workflow, our sister site RecipeAgents has step-by-step recipes for several of these jobs.

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