# General

The Agent is an AI assistant that works beside the WordPress screen you are
on. It sees that screen and, depending on its [mode](/docs/ai/agent/modes.md), can
read and change what is on it: blocks in the block editor, a page in a page
builder, or anything a WordPress ability offers.

## Opening the Agent

Press `Cmd + Shift + L` on a Mac, or `Ctrl + Shift + L` on Windows and Linux,
on any WordPress admin screen. The page reloads with the Agent in a column on
the left and your screen, still fully usable, on the right. The same shortcut
closes the Agent and returns to the plain screen.

The shortcut also works in the Bricks, Breakdance, Beaver Builder, Elementor
and Etch editors. It is not available on the workspace screen, which has its
own assistant.

Only users whose role may use the Agent can open it; by default that is
administrators. [Settings](/docs/ai/agent/settings.md) changes which roles may.

## The Agent column

The header of the column has three controls:

- **Options** starts a **New chat**, and, in a mode that supports it, a new
  [coding agent](/docs/ai/agent/coding-agents.md) terminal.
- The mode button shows the current mode. It opens **Agent modes**, where you
  pick another mode. A chat keeps the mode it started with, so the button only
  changes the mode before the first message. In a page builder the builder's
  mode is fixed.
- **History** lists your earlier Agent conversations, to reopen or delete.

Below them is the conversation, and at the bottom the message field with its
model selector. The selector lists the models of every provider with a stored
[API key](/docs/ai/settings/api-keys.md) and remembers your choice.

## What the Agent can do

What the Agent can change depends on the mode:

- In the block editor and the supported page builders it works on the open
  page through a virtual copy of its content and tools of the editor, and
  your changes appear on the right as it makes them. You still save the page
  yourself.
- In every mode it can look for and run WordPress
  [abilities](/docs/ai/agent/abilities.md), within your own permissions.
- Modes that allow it can run JavaScript in the page on the right.

Requests go to the AI provider through your site: the Agent's browser never
holds an API key, and SleekAI adds the stored key on the server. This relay
serves OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and OpenRouter, so the Agent cannot use
[custom models](/docs/ai/settings/custom-models.md), although the selector lists
them.

## The Agent, Chats, chatbots and the assistant

- **The Agent** works beside an admin screen or page builder, with tools
  that act on it.
- **[Chats](/docs/ai/chat.md)** is a plain conversation with a model, in the AI
  workspace.
- **[Chatbots](/docs/ai/chatbots/general.md)** talk to your site's visitors.
- **The workspace assistant**, opened from the workspace header, helps inside
  the workspace itself; it belongs to the workspace and works without
  SleekAI.

Agent conversations are stored per user, apart from your chats, and a
[retention period](/docs/ai/chat.md#keeping-chats-for-a-limited-time) deletes
them like chats.