Documentation · Agents and work
Meet the agents
Who each Ivy Link agent is, what it does, when it runs, and which budgets keep it busy. Plus the SEO expert on Enterprise.
Every site gets the whole team, on every plan. Your budget decides how often the paid agents work and how much of your site they read each run. It never makes their work cheaper or lighter. A short budget or balance means agents wait, not that they do worse work.
You can watch every agent on the Agents page. Its mascot and name sit next to everything it does.
The team at a glance
| Agent | What it does | When it runs | Spends credits? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scout | Daily checks, then sorts what they find | Every day | Daily checks: no. Sorting: yes |
| Root | Keeps Search Console, sitemaps and IndexNow in sync | About every hour | No |
| Lumen | Tests page speed and crawls your whole site | Every 30, 14 or 7 days, by plan | No |
| Sage | Gets to know your site, then reviews it | As often as your plan allows | Yes |
| Pip | Checks in on work and measures before and after | On days something changed, and 7 and 28 days after a change ships | Check-ins: yes. Measuring: no |
| Trellis | Builds fixes, pages and tools as pull requests | After you approve an idea | Yes |
| Courier | Writes prompts you can paste when there's no pull request | After you approve an idea | No |
| Atlas | Writes your report | When you buy a report | Paid with the report |
Scout's daily checks, Root and Lumen are the free checks. They never touch your balance, and they keep running when your credits run out. They do need agents on: with agents Off, nothing runs, free checks included. Pip's before-and-after measurements and Courier's prompts are free too.
Scout
Scout notices problems in the daily checks and sorts them.
What it does. Once a day, Scout looks over your site:
- Your search numbers from the last 7 days against the 7 days before. It flags searches that gained or lost clicks or moved in position, and big swings in your site's clicks.
- Your robots.txt, your sitemaps and up to 30 pages, for anything that keeps pages out of search.
- Whether the data behind your pages is fresh.
Then Scout sorts the new findings into fixes worth doing. Small search swings have to last 3 days running before they go further. Big drops, and problems with your pages, sitemaps or data, go straight through.
When it runs. The daily checks start each morning, from 09:45 UTC. Sorting runs later the same day, and only when there's something new to sort.
Budgets. The daily checks are free and run on every plan. Sorting findings spends a little from your balance.
Root
Root keeps Search Console, sitemaps and IndexNow in sync.
What it does. Root syncs your Search Console data, checks that your site is up, sends your changed sitemaps to Google, and tells search engines about pages that changed (IndexNow). When a fix ships, Root makes sure search engines hear about it.
When it runs. Around the clock. Sitemaps and IndexNow notices go out about every hour.
Budgets. Free. Root runs the same on every plan.
Lumen
Lumen runs Lighthouse and crawls the site.
What it does. Lumen tests your homepage and two typical pages for speed on mobile, 3 runs a page. A score under 90 is a finding, and under 50 is serious. Lumen also crawls every page in your sitemap for broken links, missing titles and pages search can't see. It reads a few pages at a time, so the crawl is gentle on your site however big it is.
When it runs. As often as your plan allows, never more than once a week:
| Plan | Speed test and full crawl |
|---|---|
| Seedling (10 credits a month) | Every 30 days |
| Sprout (30) | Every 30 days |
| Climb (100) | Every 14 days |
| Canopy (300) | Every 7 days |
A Custom budget is counted as a monthly amount: 300 credits a month or more gets every 7 days, 100 or more every 14 days, and less than that every 30 days.
Budgets. Free. A bigger plan only makes Lumen come round more often.
Sage
Sage reviews the site as often as your plan allows: technical, keywords and content.
What it does. On a new site with no report, Sage starts by getting to know it: what you sell, who you sell to and which searches matter. Regular checks and reviews start after that. From then on, Sage takes turns between reviews:
- Technical review. Problems that hold pages back in search.
- Keyword review. Searches you could win.
- Content review. Content gaps, and what competitors cover that you don't.
- Data review. Data that could power new pages, on sites that already have live data with Ivy Link.
Each review turns into ideas for you to approve. You get at most 3 new ideas a day per site, and at most 15 wait at once. Ideas you don't review expire after 14 days.
When it runs. Weekly at the least. A bigger budget speeds this up to every day, then adds more review turns a day: each one reads the next part of your site or takes the next kind of review, so no kind reads a page twice in a day.
Budgets. Sage spends credits, so it's the first paid agent your budget wakes. It's busy on a typical day on every plan.
Pip
Pip checks in on work and measures before and after.
What it does. Pip runs short check-ins on keywords, technical issues, content and data, on days something it watches has changed. When a change ships, Pip measures that page against its numbers from before, at 7 days and again at 28 days. You see the results on Results.
When it runs. Check-ins run once a day at 12:00 UTC, only on days something changed, and never on the same day as Sage's review. Measurements run 7 and 28 days after each change ships.
Budgets. Check-ins spend credits. Before-and-after measurements are free. In the plan pictures, Pip is busy on a typical day on every plan.
Trellis
Trellis builds fixes, pages and tools as pull requests.
What it does. With GitHub connected and Pull requests picked under How finished work reaches your site in Settings, Trellis turns an idea you approved into a pull request on your site's repository. You review it and merge it. See Ship changes.
When it runs. After you approve an idea. Work you approved goes first, ahead of any new research. A small slice of your budget is always kept back for it.
Budgets. Trellis spends credits. In the plan pictures, it sleeps on Seedling and is busy on a typical day from Sprout up.
Courier
Courier writes prompts you can paste when there's no pull request.
What it does. If GitHub isn't connected, or you picked Prompts only, Courier writes each approved fix as a prompt you paste into your site builder or AI tool. The prompt shows on Results, and the feed shows Prompt ready to copy: followed by the idea's title.
When it runs. After you approve an idea, when there's no pull request to open.
Budgets. Free. Courier writes the prompt from the approved idea itself, so it never touches your balance. In the plan pictures, it sleeps on Seedling and is busy on a typical day from Sprout up.
Atlas
Atlas writes your report.
What it does. Atlas writes your site report. Other agents help with its steps, and the report page tells you who is doing what, for example "Sage is judging search demand."
When it runs. When you buy a report. Reports are bought separately from your agents' budget, and they still run with agents off. See Report depths.
Budgets. None. Your plan doesn't wake Atlas, so it isn't in the plan pictures.
Who's busy on each plan
On pricing and in Settings under Agents, each plan card shows the crew of seven on an ivy vine: Scout, Root, Lumen, Sage, Pip, Trellis and Courier. Agents that are awake are busy on a typical day. Agents that are asleep (faded, eyes shut) wait for the next review. They still work when there's something for them, just less often. The vine shows how much of your site each run reads.
For a typical 50-page site:
| Plan | Busy on a typical day | Awake | Asleep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seedling | 5 | Scout, Root, Lumen, Sage, Pip | Trellis, Courier |
| Sprout | 7 | Everyone | Nobody |
| Climb | 7 | Everyone | Nobody |
| Canopy | 7 | Everyone | Nobody |
Scout, Root and Lumen are awake on every plan, because the free checks run every day. The review chain (Sage, Pip, Trellis, Courier) wakes as the number of reviews your budget buys goes up.
These counts depend on your site's size. Settings works them out for your own site's page count, so your cards may differ from pricing. The caption under each picture says N agents busy on a typical day. If a budget buys no reviews at all, it says N agents busy: the free daily checks.
On a small site, a bigger plan can do no more than the one below it. The card then says More than a site this size needs and names the cheaper plan that covers your site as often and as widely. See Budgets.
Your SEO expert (Enterprise)
Your SEO expert checks the agents' ideas on Enterprise sites.
Your SEO expert is a person, not an agent. They come with Enterprise: $1,000 a month per site. On Enterprise, your agents run on Canopy and Ivy Link pays for their work, so they never wait for credits. The plan picture shows the whole team plus your SEO expert with a check mark: The whole team at Canopy level, and your SEO expert checks every idea.
How it works:
- An agent comes up with an idea for your site.
- The idea goes to your SEO expert first. The feed shows With your SEO expert: followed by its title, with no link. It isn't on Approvals, Home, Decisions or the site map yet.
- If your expert passes it on, it reaches you like any other idea. If they drop it, you never see it.
Ideas waiting with your expert never expire. Your own ideas and the actions from your report don't wait for the expert. Your expert's messages show in the feed as Your SEO expert, under Everyone. They don't have a conversation of their own.
What runs 24/7
The homepage's Running 24/7 section lists what works on your site around the clock. Three of those jobs are marked Free, and they're the free checks:
- Daily checks (Scout): every morning.
- Indexing (Root): about every hour.
- Speed and crawl (Lumen): on your plan's interval, a few pages at a time.
These keep going when your balance runs out, as long as agents are on. Research and pull requests run at the pace of your budget and while your balance covers it. Reports are bought on their own. If you run out of credits, every agent except Scout, Root and Lumen shows Paused on the Agents page, while those three keep working. Add credits and the paid agents start again on their own. See Credits.
More agents on the way
A few more characters are being built. They aren't on your team yet, though you may see them help with steps on your report while it builds:
- Weaver will review design, usability and accessibility.
- Echo will track rankings and AI citations.
- Harvest will collect data and turn it into answers.
An agent only appears on your Agents page once its work can run on your account. New agents join your team as they're ready, with no setup.
Last updated October 31, 2026
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