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Agent roles

Every TalkIDE project comes with the same team of five agents. Each agent has a defined role and a defined scope. This page documents what each one does, what it can and cannot do, and how you interact with it.

Overview

Agent Role You interact with it by...
Mara Product Manager Chatting in the main conversation
Iris Designer Asking Mara for design changes
Theo Engineer Asking Mara for code or feature work
Nia QA Automatic; Mara surfaces test results
Kai DevOps Asking Mara to deploy or configure infra

You address Mara. She decides which specialists to involve and when.

Mara (Product Manager)

Mara is the only agent who talks to you directly by default. She turns what you describe into a plan and coordinates the rest of the team.

What Mara does:

  • Asks clarifying questions before any work starts
  • Turns your description into a project plan
  • Delegates design, engineering, testing, and infrastructure tasks to the right specialist
  • Reports back to you when a task is done, partially done, or blocked

What Mara does not do:

  • Write code directly (she routes that to Theo)
  • Make visual decisions without checking with Iris
  • Deploy to production (that is Kai's domain)

How to interact: Talk to Mara the way you would talk to a project manager. Describe outcomes, not implementation details. "I want users to be able to reset their password by email" works better than "add a POST /auth/reset-password endpoint".

Iris (Designer)

Iris handles layouts, component design, visual style, and copy polish.

What Iris does:

  • Designs screens and UI components
  • Produces design tokens (colors, spacing, typography) for the project
  • Writes and refines UI copy
  • Adapts the visual language when you request a style change
  • Hands off structured design artifacts to Theo

What Iris does not do:

  • Write application logic or backend code
  • Deploy anything
  • Override decisions Mara has confirmed with you without flagging it

How to interact: Ask Mara for design work ("can we make the dashboard less cluttered" or "I want a warmer color palette"). Mara briefs Iris and brings back the result.

Theo (Engineer)

Theo writes all application code: frontend, backend, database schemas, and third-party integrations.

What Theo does:

  • Implements features based on the agreed plan and Iris's design handoffs
  • Sets up the database schema and migrations
  • Wires third-party services (payments, email, storage, etc.)
  • Fixes bugs surfaced by Nia or reported by you
  • Refactors code when asked

What Theo does not do:

  • Make design decisions independently (he follows Iris's handoffs)
  • Deploy to production infrastructure (that is Kai's job)
  • Redefine project scope without checking with Mara

How to interact: Ask Mara for engineering work. For bug reports, describe what you saw and when. Theo works from specific descriptions, not vague instructions like "make it better".

Nia (QA)

Nia tests every change before it reaches your preview. Her work runs automatically; you rarely address her directly.

What Nia does:

  • Runs automated tests against each build
  • Checks accessibility on key flows
  • Flags regressions before they reach you
  • Reports test failures back to Mara (who then routes the fix to Theo)

What Nia does not do:

  • Fix bugs herself (she reports them)
  • Skip testing to speed up delivery
  • Test changes that have not been committed by Theo

How to interact: You mostly see Nia's output as pass/fail status in Mara's updates. If a deploy is held up because tests are failing, Mara will tell you what Nia found.

Kai (DevOps)

Kai manages hosting, deployments, custom domains, TLS certificates, and infrastructure configuration.

What Kai does:

  • Deploys new versions of your app
  • Provisions databases and storage
  • Configures custom domains and manages TLS
  • Monitors uptime and alerts Mara to outages
  • Handles environment variables and secrets

What Kai does not do:

  • Write application code
  • Make design or product decisions
  • Give you direct access to production infrastructure credentials

How to interact: Tell Mara when you want to deploy, add a domain, or change a region. She briefs Kai with the right parameters.

A note on agent configuration

Agent profiles (preferred stack, visual style, region defaults, and similar settings) are configurable per project. Configuration options are documented as they become available in the product. During private preview, the defaults are chosen by the team and work well for most projects.