What is Precursive AI?

Precursive AI analyses your Salesforce data and generates AI-powered insights and actions for the records that matter most to your team. These insights help you:

• Understand the current status of your deals, projects, accounts, or other records
• Identify risks and opportunities you might have missed
• Get AI-powered recommendations for next steps
• Take action directly from the insight, without leaving the record

The core building block is the Zen Agent. A Zen Agent is configured to look at a particular type of Salesforce record (Opportunities, Projects, Accounts, or any custom object), gather the data that matters, and produce an insight. The resulting insights appear directly on record pages via the Precursive AI component, and can also be delivered by scheduled email.

Key Concepts

Context Sources

A Context Source is reusable building block that define how to pull specific data from Salesforce. Each Context Source is built on a Salesforce Flow and is created by an admin. Once created, the same Context Source can be reused by many Zen Agents.

Examples of Context Sources:

• "Recent Tasks and Events" - activity history for any record
• "Project Milestones" - milestone status and dates
• "Open Risks and Issues" - Project Health log entries
• "Related Contacts" - contact information linked to accounts

Context Sources are created and maintained by admins. Builders pick from the available Context Sources when configuring Rules.

A note on data sources: Prompt injection can occur where AI is provided with externally sourced or user-generated content (such as support cases or emails). Precursive mitigates this by controlling which data sources can be used as context, limiting exposure to untrusted inputs, and applying safeguards at the application layer. Admins control what data flows into Context Sources, ensuring only trusted sources are used.

Rules

A Rule is the combination of a Context Source and an instruction. It tells the AI what data to look at (the Context Source) and what to do with it (the instruction). A Zen Agent can have one Rule or several, and each Rule contributes to the final insight.

For example, a Project Status Zen Agent might include:

• Rule 1 - Use the "Project Tasks" Context Source and identify upcoming milestones and overdue work
• Rule 2 - Use the "Recent Activities" Context Source and check for engagement gaps
• Rule 3 - Use the "Open Risks and Issues" Context Source and summarise critical issues

Rules run in order and each contributes context to the final insight.

Zen Agents

A Zen Agent ties everything together. It picks the records to analyse, sets the rules to apply, defines a custom score and salience, and links the actions the AI can recommend or take.

For example, a Project Status agent might be configured to:

• Analyse all active Projects in delivery
• Run the Rules above to gather context and generate the insight
• Surface a Project Risk score so users can see at a glance which projects need attention

Actions

Actions are reusable Salesforce record operations - either creating a new record or updating an existing one - that the AI can recommend or run automatically based on the insight. Each Action has admin-defined Action Instructions (what the action should do, how to populate fields). When an Action is linked to a Zen Agent, the builder can add agent-specific instructions that the AI sees alongside the admin-level ones.

Actions are defined by admins and linked to Zen Agents by builders. They can be triggered manually by a user (Supervised) or run automatically by the AI when its confidence in the recommendation is high (Autonomous).

Who Does What

Precursive AI has three permission roles:

• Precursive AI Standard - View insights on record pages, provide feedback, act on recommended actions.
• Precursive AI Insights Builder - Create and configure Zen Agents. Link Context Sources and Actions to agents.
• Precursive AI Admin - Full access. Create Context Sources, create Actions, manage entitlements, configure data privacy and sharing settings.

How Insights Reach You

Precursive AI Component on Record Pages

The Precursive AI component is added to record pages by an admin. It can be displayed in two layouts (chosen per page placement):

• Card - sits inline within the page layout alongside other components. This is the default.
• Docked - a floating panel pinned to the bottom-right of the screen, collapsible to a header strip.

When you open a record, the most recent insight for that record is displayed.

From the component you can:

• View the AI-generated insight, including the score, citations, and recommended actions
• Switch between Zen Agents using the dropdown - including agents from related records (for example, viewing an Account agent while on an Opportunity)
• Refresh to generate a new insight on demand
• Share the underlying context data by selecting "Share context..." from the Zen Agent dropdown
• Provide feedback on the insight quality

Email Digests

Insights can be delivered to your inbox on a schedule. Your admin configures which records are included, the recipients, and how often emails are sent.

Slack Digests 

Insights can also be delivered directly to Slack. Similarly to Email Digests, it requires targeted channel, frequency and configuration on what needs to be included.

How to Get Started

This article is the starting point for understanding Precursive AI. The articles below are organised by what you will likely do first.

For end users - start here:

• Viewing Insights and Taking Action - how to read insights, switch between agents, refresh, share context, provide feedback, and act on recommendations.

For builders - once your admin has set up Context Sources and Actions:

• Creating Zen Agents - how to configure agents, add rules, set scoring prompts, link actions, and connect an entitlement. 
• Feedback Management - how to review user feedback and use it to improve your agents.

For admins - foundational setup:

• Creating and Configuring Context Sources - how to connect Salesforce data to the AI via Flows
• Creating and Configuring ActionsCreating and Configuring Actions (/s/article/Creating-and-Configuring-Actions) - how to define reusable Actions for builders to attach to agents.
• Insight Sharing and Access Control - how to configure access controls when running a private sharing model on Insight Results.