Skip to main content
Most of the time your digital twin answers you the way you’d expect: one AI model reads your question, looks things up if it needs to, and writes back. One mind, start to finish. Agent mode replaces that single mind with a small team. One model becomes the manager, and it hires temporary helpers to work on pieces of the job — often several at the same time. It’s the difference between asking a colleague a question and asking them to run a small project. This is separate from Reasoning & Thinking, which controls how hard a single model thinks before answering. The two can be combined.
Agent mode is opt-in per digital twin, and only administrators of a twin can turn it on. If you’ve never enabled it, everything your twin does is single-model — the rest of this page describes a mode you aren’t using yet.

​
The two modes side by side

Single model

One model handles everything: reads your question, calls tools, writes the answer. Predictable, fast, and cheap. This is how Pria has always worked and remains the default.

Agent mode

A manager model plans the work and hires helpers — a writer, a checker, a researcher — who run in parallel. Better for jobs with real steps; slower and more expensive per request.
The important thing to understand: the helpers are separate minds. They don’t share memory with the manager or with each other. Each gets a written brief, does its piece, and reports back. Everything they know about your request is what the manager wrote down for them.

​
What actually happens in agent mode

1

Pria decides whether this needs a team

Not every request does. A follow-up question, a lookup, a bit of writing — those stay single-model even when agent mode is on. Jobs that look like building something are the ones that get a team.
2

The manager plans

Internally this is called the conductor. It works in rounds: think, decide, act. In the first round it usually decides who to hire.
3

It hires helpers by role

Each helper gets a role and a written task. Common ones are a coder (builds the thing), a tester (checks the coder’s work), and a researcher (gathers material). The manager writes each brief itself.
4

Helpers work in parallel

The manager doesn’t watch them. It ends its turn and is woken when they finish. While they work, a live activity panel under the response shows each helper with its role, its tool activity, and elapsed time.
5

The manager collects and decides

It reads what came back, then either hires more help, asks for a revision, or writes your final answer.

​
Where the files go

If the team produces files, they aren’t written straight into your vault. Each run gets a private scratch workspace — think of it as a numbered desk. Helpers build there, so a half-finished draft never appears in your files. When the run completes, the finished work is moved into your real folder and the desk is cleared away.
This is why a file can be visible during a run and settle into a different place afterwards. The finished version in your vault is the one that lasts.

​
The Mode picker

Agent mode isn’t all-or-nothing. Once a twin’s administrator has enabled it (the Enable Subagents switch in the twin’s settings), the administrator also gets a Mode section under [+] → Subagents that chooses how much team Pria is allowed to hire. Picking a mode applies to the current conversation and seeds the next new one:
Pria decides per request. Simple questions stay single-model; bigger jobs get a team. The sensible default.
One model, tools, no helpers. Effectively the classic behavior.
A small team for jobs that clearly have steps.
A larger team, more rounds, more checking.
Maximum effort. Use deliberately — this is the most expensive setting.

​
What it costs

A single-model answer is billed on the tokens that one model used — see Credits. An agent-mode answer can involve dozens of model calls — every round the manager thinks, plus every tool call each helper makes. The cost reflects the whole team’s work, so the same question can cost noticeably more in agent mode than in single-model mode.
Leave the mode on Auto unless you have a reason not to. It keeps everyday questions cheap and brings in a team only when the job actually warrants one.

​
When each one is the right choice

Stay single-model

Questions, explanations, drafting, summarizing, follow-ups in a conversation, anything you want back quickly.

Reach for agent mode

Multi-step builds, work you want independently checked, or jobs that split naturally into parallel pieces.

​
Known rough edges

Agent mode is newer than the single-model path, and we’d rather tell you where it’s thin than have you discover it mid-job.
  • It can misjudge a follow-up. A short message like “now update the file” can occasionally be read as a fresh build request and open a planning interview instead of simply answering.
  • A helper can stall. A helper that loops without making progress doesn’t crash — it just keeps working. A run can therefore stay busy for a long time with little to show.
  • Long jobs can outlive the page. If your connection drops or your laptop sleeps mid-run, the work continues on the server and the finished result is saved to the conversation — you’ll see it the next time you open that chat. Long runs are bounded by a server-side time limit, and an explicit Stop still cancels immediately.
If a run looks stuck, you can stop it. Cancelling ends the run — it doesn’t quietly continue in the background.