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Core concepts: Agents, Channels & Playbooks

Three primitives power every Helio deployment. Once you understand how they fit together, the rest of the product is just configuration on top of these ideas.

ConceptUpdated May 2, 2026 9 min read

The three primitives

Helio is built on a small, deliberately limited vocabulary. Every campaign, automation, and analytics view in the product reduces to some combination of:

PrimitiveWhat it isExample
AgentThe brain. A trained model with personality, knowledge, and guardrails."Sales rep who knows the catalog and writes like a friend"
ChannelThe mouth. Where the agent shows up — WhatsApp, Instagram, email, on-site.WhatsApp Business API, Instagram DM, email
PlaybookThe plan. A sequence of triggers, conditions, and messages."If cart abandoned > 30min, send WhatsApp; if no reply in 4h, send email"
Mental model. An Agent deploys to one or more Channels. A Playbook orchestrates when and what an Agent says, across Channels.

Agents

An Agent is what your customers actually interact with. Every Agent has:

  • A persona — name, voice, tone, refusal style
  • Knowledge — your product catalog, FAQs, policies, past chats
  • Tools — actions it can take: look up an order, apply a discount, escalate to a human
  • Guardrails — what it must never do (e.g. promise free shipping, discuss competitors)

Create an Agent

Most stores ship with two — a sales agent and a support agent. Here's how to create one:

POST https://api.helioai.tech/v1/agents
Authorization: Bearer hk_live_...

{
  "name": "Catalog Concierge",
  "type": "sales",
  "persona": "warm, concise, never pushy",
  "knowledge_sources": ["shopify:catalog", "notion:faqs"]
}

Channels

A Channel is the surface your Agent speaks through. Each Channel has its own constraints — message length, media types, reply windows, opt-in rules. Helio handles these for you, but it's worth knowing the shape of each.

ChannelReply windowMediaBest for
whatsapp24 hoursImages, video, docs, buttonsHigh-intent, post-purchase
instagram24 hoursImages, video, stickersDiscovery, brand-led
emailNoneRich HTMLLong-form, win-back
websiteLiveAnythingPre-purchase Q&A

Playbooks

If Agents and Channels are the actors and stages, Playbooks are the script. A Playbook describes a flow as a small graph of triggers, conditions, and actions.

Don't over-engineer.The best playbooks have 2–5 steps. If yours has 12 branches, you're rebuilding a CRM — that's not what Helio is for.

FAQ

Can one Agent run on multiple Channels?
Yes. Most customers deploy a single Agent across WhatsApp + Instagram, then layer a separate "win-back" Agent on email. The Agent adapts its tone per Channel automatically.
How is a Playbook different from a Shopify Flow?
Shopify Flow is deterministic ("if X, do Y"). Helio Playbooks are AI-augmented — the Agent decides what to say within the structural rules you set. Use Flow for fulfillment logic, Playbooks for conversation.
Can I import existing flows from Klaviyo?
Partially. We import the trigger and audience definitions; the message content is regenerated by your Agent in your brand voice rather than copied 1:1.

What to read next

PreviousInstall Helio on Shopify