When agents work
Execution intervals, active hours, and why continuous is rarely the right answer.
An agent either runs on a loop or on an interval. The interval is the more useful setting for almost every operational job, because most of what a shop does changes hourly at best.
| Interval | Suits |
|---|---|
| Real-time loop | Work that must be picked up the moment it lands — a call, a live conversation. |
| Every 1 min | Inbound customer messages where a minute of latency is noticeable. |
| Every 5 min | Most inbox and order work. A good default. |
| Every 15 min | Stock and supplier work, where nothing changes faster than this. |
| Hourly | Reconciliation, reporting, anything with a daily rhythm. |
Active hours
Separately, you choose when agents work at all: always, on a daily window, or on a custom cadence measured in minutes. The custom range runs from every minute to once a week.
Queue priority is different
Your plan carries a queue priority — low, standard, fast track or high priority. That governs how your runs are scheduled against everyone else's under load. It is not a measure of how fast a model responds, and it does not change your agent's interval.