Airtable

What it is

An agent connected to Airtable works in your bases the way a teammate does. It finds and reads records, adds and updates them, leaves comments and mentions people, attaches files, and picks up the records assigned to it.

In Airtable, the agent works as the user who signs in when you connect: records whose person field names that user go to the agent, and the records and comments it writes carry that user’s name. An account of its own, with the agent’s name, is the cleanest choice, because teammates can then assign it records like anyone else.

Before you start

You need an Airtable account with access to the bases the agent should work in. Editor access is enough to work with records. For the agent to hear about changes on its own (a record assigned to it, a form submission), one of your employees has to be connected with an account that is a creator of the base: Airtable lets only creators set up the notifications we use. One is enough: every employee whose account reaches the base then hears it, editors included.

On Airtable’s Free plan, a workspace takes 1,000 requests a month from connected apps, and everything the agent does in its bases counts toward them, the notifications included. Paid plans have far more room.

Connecting Airtable

1. Open the agent, go to the Tools tab and choose Airtable.
2. Click Sign in with Airtable and sign in with the agent’s account. Airtable then asks which bases to share: add each base, or a whole workspace, the agent should reach, and allow AgentTeams.
3. The wizard checks the connection and switches on the default reaction. You’re done.

To share more bases later, or fewer, open Airtable’s Account settings, then Integrations. The agent picks up the change within a few hours.

What the agent can do

• Records. Find records by words in them, by any field, through a view or with a formula; read a record with all its fields; add, update and delete records, up to 50 at a time; and add or update records by a matching field (an email, an order number), so nothing is entered twice.
• Every kind of field. Text, numbers, checkboxes, dates, selects, people, links to other records and files. Fields Airtable computes itself, like formulas and lookups, it reads but never writes.
• Comments. Read the comments on a record, comment and reply, mention people so they’re notified, and edit or remove its own comments.
• Files. Read the files attached to a record (PDFs, documents, spreadsheets and images) and attach new ones, up to 5 MB each.
• Bases, tables and fields. Read how a base is built, create bases and tables, add fields, rename tables and fields or change their descriptions, and change a formula. Airtable doesn’t let apps delete tables or fields, or add computed ones like formulas and lookups: a person adds those in Airtable.

What the app asks for

The access is limited to the bases you share on Airtable’s consent screen, and to what the signed-in account may do there. We use it for the features above:

• Records, to find, read, add, update and delete them.
• Comments, to read the conversation on a record and add to it.
• Tables and fields, to know how your bases are built, and to add bases, tables and fields when asked.
• People and views, read only, to see who works in a base and its views, so the agent can assign records and mention teammates.
• Notifications about changes, so the agent hears about records assigned to it and new records as they happen.
• The account’s email address, read only, to show which account is connected.

What it reacts to

One reaction is on from the start: a record assigned to the agent, meaning a person field (an assignee, an owner) now names its account, whether a teammate set it or an Airtable automation did. The agent works on the record, updates it and leaves a comment with what it did. On the Tasks page you can also switch on reactions to form submissions, new records and changed records; say in a reaction’s instruction which tables matter, since these fire for whole bases.

Many records added or changed at once, like an import, reach the agent as one event, not one each. The agent never reacts to its own changes, so one update can’t set off another, and that includes an Airtable automation acting on a record the agent made, like assigning it. Airtable sends no notice about comments, so a comment that mentions the agent doesn’t start anything on its own; Airtable emails the mention to the agent’s address instead. See Reactions for filters and custom instructions.

A form can be filled in by anyone with its link, so the agent treats a submission’s answers as information from outside, never as instructions.

Staying in control

Every change the agent wants to make in Airtable goes through a review step first, and your company’s rules decide which changes need a person to approve them. Start strict and loosen it per action once the updates look right. Approval gates explains how.

What we receive, and what we keep

• Airtable tells us when records change in the bases where one of your employees’ accounts is a creator, once for your whole team. We only look into and keep the changes an employee has a reaction for; the rest are dropped straight away.
• What the agent reads and writes while working stays with that agent in your own AgentTeams workspace, the same way its chats and emails do.
• Nothing from your bases is used to train any model. For the full picture, see our privacy policy.

Disconnecting

There are two places, and doing both is the clean way round:

1. In AgentTeams. Open the agent, go to the Tools tab, open the Airtable card and click Disconnect. The agent stops working in Airtable at once, and Airtable stops sending us changes.
2. In Airtable. Open Account, then Integrations, and remove AgentTeams. Airtable gives apps no way to end their own access, so this is the step that ends it at Airtable.

Disconnecting leaves everything the agent already wrote in Airtable in place, and the agent keeps what it learned. Remove the agent entirely if you want that gone too.

If something is off

• It can’t find a base. The base wasn’t shared at the sign-in. Add it in Airtable under Account, Integrations.
• It doesn’t pick up a record assigned to it. The person field has to name the account the agent signed in as, and one of your employees has to be connected with an account that is a creator of the base. Without one, the agent can work with the records, but the base sends no notices.
• Airtable says the month’s requests are used up. That’s the Free plan’s limit for the workspace; it resets on the 1st of the month.
• It picks up someone else’s records. It was connected with that person’s account. Disconnect, then connect again signed in as the agent’s own account.

Related

• AI agents for Airtable: what teams use it for
• Reactions: filters and custom instructions
• Approval gates: who approves what