Bring Your Own Agent allows you to connect an agent built on an external platform into monday.com, where it becomes a full entity in the system. Once connected, the external agent can be chatted with, mentioned on items, assigned tasks, triggered, and monitored, just like an agent built inside the platform.
The agent's brain, including its instructions, skills, and tools, stays on the external platform and is managed there. monday.com acts as the governance layer, collaboration surface, and system of record for everything the agent does.
Use this article to learn how to connect an external agent, understand what it can do inside monday.com, and see how it compares to monday agents and MCP.
How to connect an external agent
To connect an external agent to monday.com:
1Open the AI Agents tab in the left navigation pane and click Bring Your Own Agent.
2Select your provider from the list.
3Provide the necessary details and connect your externally-built agent.
Once connected, the agent appears in monday.com as its own entity with a dedicated identity in the system. When the agent joins your workspace, it automatically receives workspace context, including board structure and team information, so no manual setup is needed to get it up to speed.
Supported providers
You can connect agents built on the following platforms. Additional providers are being added continuously.
Some providers require additional setup steps before the connection can be completed. The setup flow varies by provider. See below for provider-specific guidance.
Customizing your external agent
Once connected, your external agent appears in monday.com with its own identity. You can customize its name and description directly in monday.com. These are display settings only and do not affect anything on the external platform. The agent's profile picture will feature the provider's logo.
The agent builder includes the same tabs available for agents built inside monday.com: Brain, Triggers, Channels, and Activity. For a full breakdown of how these work, see the AI Agents on monday.com article.
For external agents, the Brain tab contains only two sections: monday Instructions and Knowledge and access. The agent's core instructions, skills, and tools stay on the external platform and are not surfaced here.
monday Instructions are monday-specific behavioral guidelines that define how your external agent interacts within monday.com. They can be set manually in the Brain tab, or they develop naturally through your chat with the agent. For example, through conversation, you might instruct your agent to create a new item on a specific board when it receives a new task, and post a summary Update on the relevant item when it completes its work.
What external agents can do in monday.com
Once connected, an external agent can:
- Chat with you directly: conversations are mirrored between monday.com and the external platform, so a chat started in monday.com is also visible on the external platform and vice versa.
- Respond to @mentions on items and act on item assignments: the agent can be mentioned on items and assigned to items to trigger it to take action.
- Run based on triggers: the agent can be triggered by monday.com events such as status changes or item creation, on a set schedule, and more.
- Participate in AI Workflows: external agents can be placed into multi-agent flows managed through the AI workflow builder, with monday.com coordinating the triggers and handoffs between agents.
- Appear in the activity log as its own identity: every action the external agent takes is attributed to the agent itself, not to the user who connected it.
- Be managed in the Agents directory tab, under the Administration section: external agents appear alongside monday AI agents in the Agent directory tab, with a clear label distinguishing them. Admins can deactivate any external agent at any time.
What stays on the external platform
The following are managed on the external platform and are not accessible from within monday.com:
- Instructions: the agent's core prompt and behavioral logic
- Skills: capabilities defined and managed on the external platform
- Tools: integrations and external connections configured outside monday.com
This is intentional. monday.com does not duplicate what the external platform manages. Instead, it provides the governance, observability, and collaboration layer on top of the agent's existing setup.
Permissions and admin controls
External agents follow an allowlist permission model. By default, a connected agent has no access to any content in your account, including public boards and monday docs. Access must be explicitly granted for each asset the agent needs. For example, for boards, you can grant access by subscribing the agent as a board member, by adding the board in the Knowledge and access section of the Brain tab, or by granting the permission via chat. Nothing is inherited from any user's permissions.
To enable Bring Your Own Agent, an admin must grant the External agents permission in AI permissions for the relevant roles.
Admins can deactivate any external agent at any time directly in the Agent directory, under the Administration section. All agents, both monday agents and external agents, appear in the same view within the Administration section, with external agents clearly labeled and filterable. Every action an external agent takes is logged under the agent's own name in the activity log, so it is always clear what the agent did versus what a person did.
How Bring Your Own Agent compares to monday AI agents and MCP
There are a few ways to bring AI capabilities into your monday.com workflow. The right approach depends on where your agents are built and how you want them to operate.
These agents are built directly within the monday.com UI using the monday AI agent builder. No code is required, and agents are configured, governed, and monitored entirely within the platform. Permissions are admin-controlled and granular, you define exactly which boards the agent can access and what it can do within each. Every action the agent takes is logged in the activity log under the agent's own name.
Bring Your Own Agent
This is for teams that have already built agents on an external platform and want to bring them into monday.com, and continue using them in this context as well. The agent's brain stays on the external platform, while monday.com provides the governance, collaboration, and observability layer on top. External agents follow an allowlist model, they need to be explicitly granted access to monday assets, like boards. Like monday AI agents, every action is logged under the agent's own name, making it clear what the agent did versus what a person did.
MCP connects an external LLM to monday.com so it can read and act on your data. It is initiated by a person in a chat window and runs with that person's full permissions. Access cannot be scoped down below what the user already has access to. Actions are logged under the user who initiated them, not as a separate entity. It is best suited for technical users performing ad hoc queries.
Usage and credits
Credit consumption for an external agent depends on the type of action performed:
| Action type | What it consumes |
|---|---|
| Agent reasoning and execution performed on the external platform (for example, chatting with the agent, or any analysis and decision-making it performs before taking action in monday.com) | Third-party provider credits (for example, Anthropic tokens), not monday AI credits |
| Standard monday.com actions (adding items, updating boards, tagging team members, and similar) | API calls against the account's API quota |
| AI-specific monday.com actions (triggering an AI column, building a Vibe app, or triggering a workflow with AI blocks) | monday AI credits |
To learn more, see the AI Credits article.
FAQs
If you have any questions, please reach out to our team right here. We’re available 24/7 and happy to help.