Chat vs. work items

There are two ways work happens, depending on the agent type.

• Chat — with a Conversational Agent, you have a back-and-forth conversation in a thread. You ask, it responds, you refine. Best for interactive, human-in-the-loop work.
• Work items — a Worker Agent processes work items: units of work created automatically (on a schedule or via the API) that run on their own. Each one moves through a tracked lifecycle (Pending → Executing → Completed / Error / Needs review), and you can open one to see what happened or jump in when it needs review.

In short: chat is something you drive; work items are processed for you.