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Studio: agents, workflows and jobs
Studio is where you go for a bit more control. Most people never need it: your rooms set up and use everything in Studio for you. Open it when you want to fine-tune a teammate, build a routine of your own, or find out why something that was supposed to run didn't.
Where to find it
Click Studio in the left sidebar, below the divider. A panel opens with three parts:
- Agents: your AI teammates and their settings.
- Workflows: saved, repeatable tasks and their schedules.
- Jobs: the history of everything that ran, and what needs attention.
The first time you open Studio, a short tour points out each part.
Agents
An agent is one AI teammate. Every teammate in a room's crew is an agent, and Studio lists them all in one place. For each one you can change its name and role, how it writes, which AI model it uses, which guidelines and documents it always reads, and how much a single piece of work may cost. You can also create a new agent from a plain description, or chat with one directly.
An agent can work in more than one room, so a change you make here applies in every room it works in. See Create a custom agent.
Workflows
A workflow is a saved task that Pencel can repeat, like "every Monday, read last week's paid invoices and write me a one-page summary". It can run on a schedule or whenever you press Run Now.
The routines in your rooms are workflows. So is anything you save with Save as workflow on a room reply, or build with Build on Home. The Workflows page has four tabs: Active, In progress (ones you started building but haven't saved), Draft workflows and All. See Build a workflow.
Jobs
Jobs is the record of everything that ran for you. Every run shows when it started, how long it took, what it cost and how it ended. Anything that failed or missed its schedule is listed at the top, so you can see at a glance what needs you. Open any run to read what it did, save its result as a document or try it again. See Check on scheduled work.
When you'd open Studio
| You want to | Go to |
|---|---|
| Change a teammate's writing style, model or spending cap | Agents, or in a room open Crew and click Edit ↗ next to the teammate |
| Build a routine that doesn't belong to any room, like a monthly report | Workflows ▸ New Workflow |
| Change the day or time a routine runs | Workflows, open the workflow, Schedule tab |
| Find out why a scheduled task failed or didn't run | Jobs |
| Keep a run's result in Documents | Jobs, open the run, Save as document |
How rooms and Studio fit together
A room is the friendly front of the same parts Studio shows in detail:
| In a room | In Studio |
|---|---|
| The room's crew (room settings ▸ Crew) | Agents |
| The room's routines (room settings ▸ Schedule ▸ Routines) | Workflows. Most routines open there when you click their name. |
| The room's Activity tab | Jobs, with the full run history |
You can do almost everything from the room. Studio adds the settings a room doesn't show, like an agent's guardrails or a workflow's exact schedule.
Custom tools
For advanced users, Settings ▸ Connections ▸ Custom Tools lets you add a small helper your agents can call, such as a calculation or a way to format numbers. Describe it and use Generate with AI, or start from Create Blank Tool. Custom tools run sealed off from everything else: they can calculate and reformat, but they can't reach the internet or your files. To let Pencel use an outside service, connect it instead. See Connect your accounts.
Common questions
Do I need Studio to use Pencel? No. Rooms, Home and Knowledge cover day-to-day work. Studio is there when you want more control.
If I change a room's routine in Studio, does the room see it? Yes. It's the same routine, shown in two places.
Where did my "Build" from Home go? A workflow you build from Home is listed in Jobs, not in the Workflows list.