The short answer

Agent signals are observations that help a governed agent decide where attention or reevaluation is needed. They can describe quantities, qualitative judgments or events, with explicit source and freshness context.

Attention starts with an observation

A support case has been waiting for six hours. A reviewer reports that the draft lacks evidence. A reply arrives from the customer. Each observation can change what work deserves attention, but none alone authorizes sending a message or expanding data access.

Signals let the application represent these changes without treating every metric as an instruction. The distinction becomes useful when several observations conflict: a slow case might need attention even though the available evidence remains too weak for a final response.

Interpret the observation against a reference

Six hours has little meaning without context. A desired response window of four hours makes it a reason to evaluate delay. That selected reference provides interpretation; the execution controls still determine whether a response can be sent.

The signals guide covers quantitative, qualitative and event definitions, sources and observation records. References and selected definitions are versioned catalog records. Changes to interpretation should be inspectable rather than hidden inside a collector’s code or an unrecorded prompt.

Freshness belongs in the decision

A waiting-time value collected before a case was closed should not be treated as current merely because it was delivered later. Source permission, observation context, missing data, stale observations and out-of-order delivery all matter. Your application chooses permitted observation sources and retains the evidence needed to interpret them.

A scheduler can turn an eligible observation into a bounded evaluation wakeup. A wakeup asks the system to reevaluate; it does not execute business actions directly. Your application provides the service that processes these evaluation requests and keeps track of progress.

Build a useful monitoring loop

Define the observation, its allowed source, its interpretation and the question evaluation should answer. For the support agent: collect case age, compare it with the selected response window, then ask whether a bounded investigation, clarification or escalation is warranted.

Connect this with execution admission so a noisy or frequent source cannot create unlimited work. Test silence, delayed delivery and duplicate observations as well as the happy path. Useful attention depends on reliable interpretation, not simply on counting more events.

Build a product that knows when to pay attention

Signals help a product move beyond waiting for its next chat message. A case becoming overdue, a changed condition or a new reply can call for attention while the customer is elsewhere. AgentPlat gives these observations a governed route into reevaluation. Your team chooses the sources and the actions available to the product. For technology leaders, the benefit is a foundation for proactive features whose trigger and permitted response remain distinguishable, so adding awareness does not require giving every alert unlimited power.

Explore AgentPlat 1.1 adoption when your engineering team is ready to assess the integration, and use the concept series to align product and technical stakeholders on the work model.

Sources and further reading

Documentation reviewed . Consult the linked documentation for current implementation details.