Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Joshua Birk, Senior Director of Admin Evangelism at Salesforce.

Join us as we chat about how Agent Script helps admins build more predictable and reliable AI solutions.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Joshua Birk.

How Agent Script expands the admin toolkit

The new Agentforce Builder gives admins new tools to create effective AI agents to help their orgs. Chief among them is Agent Script, which gives you more control than ever before over how your agents operate and behave. I sat down with Josh Birk to find out how it all works and why Agent Script redefines the admin role.

Agent Script is a simple, high-level scripting language that lets you create complex instructions and actions for your agent to follow. You can step in as the human in the loop and create a framework for agent behavior and context, helping you build more predictable and reliable AI solutions.

Redefining the admin role

In simple terms, Agent Script lets you look under the hood at how your agents function. If you're comfortable with coding, Script view allows you to make fast, precise changes and analyze error messages. Canvas view, meanwhile, uses visual blocks to make it easy to understand what's going on with your agent. And of course, the Agentforce assistant is always available with suggestions if you get stuck.

With so much more control over agentic behavior, Agent Script puts admins in the driver's seat for how their organization will evolve with AI. You're not just building a solution—you're designing interactions between humans and agents. In the big picture, the role of the admin starts to look less like traditional system configuration and more like experience design, governance, and operational strategy.

Getting started with Agent Script

All of this requires a great deal of thought in terms of how you're building new agentic solutions and rolling them out to your organization. Josh's biggest piece of advice is to take it slow: "Don't panic, learn Agent Script," he says.

Your existing agents will continue to work, so take your time to experiment with Agent Script to get a better understanding of what's possible. Build some new agents and take it one step at a time.

Listen to the full episode for more from Josh about what admins can do with Agent Script. And subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast to catch us in your feed every Thursday.

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Full show transcript

Mike Gerholdt:

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, if you've ever been wondering why you can't just copy and paste your old agents into the new version, this episode is for you.

I'm joined by Josh Burke, who recently walked our admin relations team through what's really changing with Agent Builder and Agentforce. And more importantly, why it matters. We're going to unpack a little bit of hybrid reasoning, what determinism really means for admins, and how Agent Script gives you even more control without losing all of that magic. So with that, let's get Josh on the podcast.

So Josh, welcome back to the podcast.

Josh Birk:

Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike Gerholdt:

Well, we know that a few people are vibing now because of the dulcent tones of Josh Burke. So in all honesty, you were in a team meeting last week and you were kind of updating the team on stuff that's coming out for new products and beta products. And the biggest thing that you always explain is like, so why is this important?

Josh Birk:

Yeah.

Mike Gerholdt:

And of course, every now and then you end your little skit with, "Thanks for attending my TED Talk."

Josh Birk:

Yeah.

Mike Gerholdt:

And I remember last week's meeting, I was like, "Oh man, that's a podcast. I need to do that."

Josh Birk:

Yeah.

Mike Gerholdt:

Because the way that you would explained what was new with Agent Builder and Agentforce, I was just like, "Oh, that totally makes sense to me." So this is where we're at and this is what I was hoping we would talk about.

Josh Birk:

Yeah. And I'll have to try because I kind of remember getting into a very weird, almost like conspiracy theory level stream of consciousness.

Mike Gerholdt:

Oh, okay. Well, it didn't feel that way.

Josh Birk:

Good. I think that's years of experience of thinking in streams of consciousnesses, whatever the plural of that is. So yeah, so I think to kind of recap a little bit, so there were two things that I think are kind of important to consider about the new Agent Builder. One is what we mean by hybrid reasoning and what we mean by determinism. And then the second thing is, where does Agent Script fit into that? So the question we were kind of tackling was, why didn't we just go back and revise the old builder? Why can't we just reiterate on it? Why are we starting completely new?

Mike Gerholdt:

And I think you even said, not to interrupt you, but to interrupt you, why can't I just move my stuff over? Why do I have to rebuild it?

Josh Birk:

And why can't I just move my stuff over? Why isn't it just copy and paste? And Agent Script is part of that.

So the original engine wasn't hybrid, is I think the easiest way to put it. So this came with a conversation with product management where I was trying to describe the differences between the old builder and the new builder. And they're like, well, let's ... The old builder wasn't doing anything wrong, so much is that the new builder's doing something more.

And what the new builder's doing that is more is that when we say hybrid, when we think of AI, we think of AI being autonomous, making its own decisions. So we had the Atlas reasoning engine that's like, "Oh, Mike is looking to find a description on a certain account. I'm going to take these actions. I'm going to put them together into a plan and then I'm going to try to make that work."

What we didn't have was the human in the loop portion of that. And where Agent Script really comes into play is it allows users to basically be like, "In this scenario, I want you to behave like this." So when we say hybrid, we mean, yeah, we're letting the engine kind of do its own magic. But then we're also applying almost ... I don't want to say flow because that's such a loaded term for a Salesforce community.

Mike Gerholdt:

Yeah.

Josh Birk:

But well, let's go to the name, right? A script, right? A script that a human can actually control personality, control tone, control behavior. When you see this, do this, when you need to call it human. So kind of giving this very human-friendly dialogue that you can then apply to the agent. And so that's how we provide more determinism.

So the reason you can't just copy and paste your old agent into the new agent is the old agent doesn't have that connection to Agent Script. And so it's literally missing a piece of the puzzle to run the engine kind of thing.

Mike Gerholdt:

Right. No, I think ... I mean, hearing you explain it, sometimes, at least as an admin, I was always like, "Oh, so they just came out with another version because they had to stick another layer of something on."

Josh Birk:

Yeah.

Mike Gerholdt:

Or like a car analogy, they changed the fuzzy dice. But this is, no, no, no, no. We're really moving ...