# Trigger Rules

Trigger rules define _when_ your agent responds and _what it says_. Writing good trigger rules is the primary way to make an agent useful. This article explains how they work and how to write them well.

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## What a trigger rule contains

Each trigger rule has five parts:

| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Label** | A short name for this rule, used in event logs and summaries (e.g. "Competitor mentioned") |
| **Description** | Plain English describing the condition — what the agent listens for (e.g. "When a competitor product or company is named in the conversation") |
| **Response instruction** | What the agent should say or do when triggered (e.g. "Provide two key differentiators between our product and theirs, in two sentences") |
| **Action type** | Speak (live agents) or Silent (send to back-channel) |
| **Hand-Raise** | Whether the agent should request the floor before speaking (Live agents only) |

**XXX SCREENSHOT:** The Trigger Rule Builder panel expanded, showing all five fields filled in for a "Competitor mentioned" rule

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## How trigger evaluation works

When your agent is in a live meeting, CoAgentor continuously evaluates the transcript against your trigger rules. Here's the process:

1. New transcript segments arrive from the real-time transcription engine
2. The agent evaluates the growing transcript buffer against each enabled rule
3. If a trigger condition is met (assessed by the AI against your description), the rule fires
4. The agent generates a contextual response following your instruction
5. The response is delivered — spoken aloud or sent to your back-channel

Evaluation happens on a rolling window of the transcript. This means the agent always has recent conversational context, not just isolated sentences.

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## Writing effective descriptions

The description is the most important part of a trigger rule. It needs to be specific enough to avoid false positives, but broad enough to catch all the relevant variations.

**Too vague:**

When something about pricing is mentioned

This may trigger constantly — pricing comes up in almost every sales call.

**Too specific:**

When the prospect says "your price is higher than [Competitor] by at least 20%"

This is unlikely to ever trigger exactly as written.

**Well calibrated:**

When the prospect raises a concern about price, cost, budget, or the expense of the product relative to a competitor or their expectations

This catches the natural range of how the topic actually comes up.

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## Writing effective response instructions

The response instruction tells the agent _what to produce_, not just _that it should respond_. The more specific, the better.

**Weak instruction:**

Talk about our pricing

**Strong instruction:**

Briefly acknowledge the concern, then explain our value-based pricing: we're premium-priced because X, Y, and Z. Mention that we have flexible payment terms available. Keep it to 3 sentences maximum.

The agent is running in real time during a live conversation — concise, actionable instructions produce better outputs than open-ended ones.

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## Sensitivity and trigger tuning

Every agent has a **Sensitivity** setting (Low / Medium / High) that affects how readily rules fire. This applies to all rules on the agent.

- **Low** — requires a very clear, direct match. Good for agents where false positives are disruptive (e.g. live agents in formal meetings).
- **Medium** — balanced. Start here.
- **High** — triggers on loosely related conversational signals. Good for research or monitoring agents where you want broad coverage.

If a specific rule is triggering too often, make its description more specific. If it's not triggering enough, broaden the description.

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## Action types per rule

Each rule can have its own action type, independent of the agent's default mode:

| Action type | What happens |
|---|---|
| **Speak** | Agent speaks the response aloud (requires Live mode agent) |
| **Silent** | Response is sent to the configured back-channel |

This lets you build nuanced agents — for example, an agent that routes low-priority observations silently to Slack, but speaks aloud only for high-priority triggers.

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## Enabling and disabling individual rules

Each rule has an enable/disable toggle. You can turn off a specific rule without deleting it — useful for seasonal rules ("when end-of-quarter deadline is mentioned") or rules you want to A/B test across different meetings.

**XXX SCREENSHOT:** A list of trigger rules showing the toggle on/off switch on each rule row, with some enabled and one disabled

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## Rule ordering

Rules are evaluated independently and in parallel — the order in the form doesn't affect evaluation priority. Multiple rules can fire in the same transcript window.

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## Example trigger rules by use case

### Sales agent

| Label | Description | Instruction |
|---|---|---|
| Competitor mentioned | Prospect names a competing product or company | Summarise our two strongest differentiators vs this competitor. Be factual. |
| Price objection | Prospect raises a concern about cost, price, or budget | Acknowledge the concern, pivot to value: explain ROI, mention payment flexibility. 3 sentences max. |
| Next steps | Conversation turns to next steps, follow-up, or closing | Suggest three specific next steps: a follow-up call, a product demo, and sending a proposal. |

### Compliance agent (silent)

| Label | Description | Instruction |
|---|---|---|
| Regulatory topic raised | Any mention of regulation, compliance, legal requirements, or specific regulatory body names | Flag this segment for compliance review. Summarise the exact regulatory topic mentioned. |
| Commitment made | The sales rep makes a promise, commitment, or guarantee about the product | Record the exact commitment made, word for word if possible. |

### Customer support agent

| Label | Description | Instruction |
|---|---|---|
| Known error described | Customer describes a symptom matching a known bug or common issue | Provide the current workaround for this issue and the expected fix timeline if known. |
| Escalation language | Customer expresses frustration, mentions cancellation, or asks for a manager | Acknowledge the frustration, summarise the issue, and provide the internal escalation path. |

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## Rule limits by plan

| Plan | Trigger rules / agent | Agents | Agents / meeting |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Free | 3 | 10 | 1 |
| Solo | 5 | 25 | 2 |
| Pro | 25 | 100 | 5 |

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## Tips and common mistakes

✅ **Write descriptions in the third person** — "When the prospect mentions X" rather than "If they say X"

✅ **Test with real transcript samples** — paste snippets from past meetings into the description field when tuning

✅ **Keep response instructions under 100 words** — longer instructions don't always produce better responses

❌ **Don't make instructions that require the agent to ask questions** — the agent speaks in response to a trigger, not as part of a dialogue flow

❌ **Don't overlap descriptions too heavily** — if two rules describe very similar conditions, they'll often both fire for the same moment, doubling up your back-channel messages

❌ **Don't set high sensitivity on a live agent with many broad rules** — this will result in constant interruptions.