NEW Reactive Agents — the fourth trigger

Give your workspace a nervous system.

A Reactive Agent wakes the instant something happens — a customer churns, an error spikes, a target account signs up. It reasons in full company context and takes a governed action, or escalates for your approval. Before you've finished your coffee.

Create a Reactive Agent
Already governing Channel, Scheduled, and Deep agents. This is the one that watches your back.
POST /eventssource: stripesigned · verifiedchurn-watch
01 · ARRIVE

Event arrives

Your system posts a structured event the instant it happens, to a signed endpoint.

customer.subscription
.deleted · $890 MRR
02 · GATE

Rule-gate

A cheap, deterministic check runs first — no AI, no cost. Misses are dropped for free.

match · MRR > $500 → pass
03 · REASON

Governed run

The agent reads the event as untrusted data, pulls history, and reasons in workspace context.

stripe.customer · 14mo
drafts win-back
04 · ACT

Act or escalate

Safe parts run autonomously. Anything high-stakes queues for your approval.

✓ logged the churn
⏸ gated the refund
The mental model

Four ways an agent wakes up.

Boardbox agents all share the same governance, budget, and kill switch. What differs is the trigger. Reactive is the new one — and it's the difference between AI you talk to and AI that's watching.

live

Channel

Wakes when you send a message.
Like a teammate in a channel.
trigger · you, in conversation
live

Scheduled

Wakes when a cron timer fires.
A standing daily or weekly job.
trigger · a cadence
new

Reactive

Wakes when an external event arrives.
A pager. A nervous system.
trigger · a webhook, in real time
live

Deep

Wakes when you hand it a big task.
A contractor you brief once.
trigger · an objective

Scheduled and Reactive are close cousins— both autonomous, both governed, both leave a run record. The difference: Scheduled is a ticker that asks "anything change since yesterday?" Reactive is real-time — it's told"this just changed" the moment it does.

How it works

Cheap to ignore. Expensive only when it matters.

A deterministic rule-gate runs before any AI does — so noise costs nothing. Only events that clear the gate ever wake the agent.

A rule-gate stands at the door.

Every event hits a deterministic check first — does it match the source and type, and clear simple conditions? A miss is dropped for free, with no model call and no cost. This is the spam-and-budget defense that makes always-on affordable.

No AI on a miss. Filtering is pure logic — thousands of events cost nothing.
You define the bar. Match event types and set thresholds in plain conditions.
churn-watch · event log
invoice.payment_failed · $12 plan07:41
dropped · below $500 MRR threshold · $0.00
subscription.updated · plan downgrade08:02
dropped · type not subscribed · $0.00
subscription.deleted · $890 MRR09:13
match · MRR $890 > $500 → wake agent

Then it reasons — in context.

Once an event passes, the agent treats it as untrusted data and grounds itself in your workspace: the company profile, growth artifacts, and live integration reads. It observes, notifies, drafts, executes, or escalates — under the same risk tiers and budget that govern every Boardbox agent.

Grounded, not generic.It knows the customer's history before it drafts a word.
One paper trail. Every run produces a record — readable, replayable, auditable.
churn-watch · run #1184
event · subscription.deleted09:13:02
customer Northwind Co · mrr $890 · tenure 14mo
read stripe.customer · history09:13
read profile · accounts · enterprise tier09:13
drafted win-back-northwind.md09:13
notified #growth · posted09:13
Governed

It can't spend or write without you.

A Reactive Agent runs under the same autonomy policy, risk tiers, and budget as your Scheduled agents — plus a kill switch. Reversible work happens on its own. Anything that moves money or can't be undone stops at an approval, with the exact diff laid out.

Risk-tiered by default. Notify and draft are free to run; refunds and writes gate.
Lands in your queue. Escalations flow into the same Proposals queue you already use.
Issue retention credit · Northwind Cochurn-watch · high-severity · moves moneyawaiting approval
$200 credit · 3-month win-back
Connect the source

Wire it up once. Point your system at the endpoint.

Boardbox gives you a signed endpoint, a one-time secret, and a copy-paste example. Your backend posts a structured event whenever something happens — that's the whole integration.

POSThttps://api.boardbox.com/v1/events/churn-watch
SIGNING SECRETwhsec_••••••••••••••8f2aReveal
Shown once, at create time. Sign every request with it — Boardbox verifies the signature before the rule-gate ever runs, so only your events get in.
post-event.ts Copy
// when something happens in your system…
await fetch("https://api.boardbox.com/v1/events/churn-watch", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Content-Type": "application/json",
"X-Boardbox-Signature": sign(body, secret),
},
body: JSON.stringify({
type: "subscription.deleted",
customer: "Northwind Co",
mrr: 890,
}),
});
Not another if-this-then-that

Governed and grounded. Not brittle.

Automation tools fire blind rules. A Reactive Agent understands your business and answers to your policy.

Zapier / IFTTT
Fires a fixed action on a fixed trigger — no judgment about whether it matters.
No context. It doesn't know the customer, the history, or the stakes.
Can write and spend freely — one bad rule, real damage.
Breaks silently when the shape of an event changes.
Reactive Agent
Decides if it matters first, then reasons about the right response.
Grounded in your profiles, artifacts, and live integration reads.
Can't spend or write without policy and approval. Kill switch always on.
Reads events as untrusted data and adapts its reasoning to what arrived.
In the wild

Events you'd want to know about — instantly.

stripe
A $900/mo customer churns
reacts in seconds
Pulls 14 months of history, drafts a win-back, posts to #growth, and queues a retention credit for approval.
auto · draft + notifygate · credit
github
Error rate spikes on deploy
reacts in seconds
Correlates the spike to the last merge, summarizes the likely cause, and opens a thread tagging the author.
auto · summarize + alertgate · rollback
my-app
A target account signs up
reacts in seconds
Enriches the account, scores fit against your ICP, drafts a personalized first-touch, and routes it to the owner.
auto · enrich + draftgate · outreach

Stop finding out later.

Describe a Reactive Agent in plain language, wire up the source, and let it watch your back — governed, grounded, and always on.

Create a Reactive Agent