What the agent does on its own, and what it asks first
Which actions the agent takes by itself, which ones wait for your approval, and how to stop it.
Koast Agent can read your accounts, build campaigns and change live ones. This page lists exactly what it does by itself, what waits for your approval, what it can't do at all, and how to stop it.
The short version
| The agent... | Examples |
|---|---|
| Does it when you ask (Agent mode) | Reads and reports, builds and edits drafts, writes copy and makes creatives |
| Asks for your approval first | Publishing a campaign, pausing something live, changing a live budget, turning something back on, changing a live campaign's ads, names or settings, turning on an Agent Task or automation, and deleting saved work |
| Never does in Plan mode | Anything that changes something. It tells you to switch to Agent mode instead |
| Can't do | Anything outside Koast (pixel firing on your site, domain verification, billing and payment methods), and watching videos (it sees only a video's first frame) |
Approval cards
When you ask for something on the "asks first" list, the agent doesn't do it straight away. It shows an approval card in the chat, headed Approval needed, with what will change. For a budget you see the old and the new amount in your ad account's currency. Nothing has changed yet.
- Select Approve and the agent makes exactly the change on the card, then tells you what changed.
- Select Cancel and nothing happens.
- A card is good for 15 minutes. If you send another message instead of answering it, the card locks. Ask again if you still want the change.
- Only a person approves. The agent can't approve for you, and an approval covers only the change on its card. If what the change would do is different by the time you approve, Koast refuses it and nothing changes.
Pausing gets a card too. It can only lower your spend, but the agent still asks before it pauses anything live.
Choose what the agent may change
Open Settings, then Agent, then Permissions. Each kind of change has a row, in three groups (Protect spend, Optimize and Create and test): Pause ads, Lower budgets, Raise budgets, Turn paused items back on, Draft creative tests, Change live ads, Publish new campaigns, Turn on automations and workflows and Delete saved work.
- Set a row to Ask first or Off for this brand. Off means the agent refuses that change and nothing changes. Automatic isn't offered.
- Draft creative tests can't be changed: it's Koast-only work and nothing is published to an ad platform.
- While the brand is Read-only (on the Daily suggestions card), every other row is off and reads "Read-only · switch to Ask-first to let Koast propose".
Plan mode and Agent mode
Pick the mode in the dropdown next to the send button: Agent "Plans and takes actions" and Plan "Answers and advises, never takes action".
In Plan mode the agent only answers and advises. If you ask it to create, change, delete, launch or import something, it says it's in plan mode and asks you to switch to agent mode. The tools that change things are hidden from it, and Koast refuses any change made in Plan mode on top of that.
In Agent mode it acts on what you ask. A clear instruction such as "pause the Harbor Cold Brew campaign" is your go-ahead, so there's no extra question for draft settings or copy. Anything on the "asks first" list still gets an approval card, pauses included.
View Only teammates can't chat with the agent in either mode. Koast rejects any message they send, unless that person is also an organization admin.
What it reads
- Metrics for campaigns, ad sets and ads, daily trends and account overviews, straight from your ad platform, including campaigns you didn't launch from Koast
- Results split by placement, device, country, age, gender or hour. See Split results with the agent
- Delivery status and disapprovals
- Your team's activity log
- Creative fatigue, scored from the numbers
- Your targets, business numbers and promo windows. See Goals and margins
- The daily suggestions Koast raised, and what happened to them
- Your drafts and campaigns, your ad account's pages, pixels, audiences and conversion events
What it builds
- Campaign drafts: campaigns, ad sets and ads, with settings, creatives you attach and copy it writes
- One campaign per draft. If the draft already has one, it asks whether you want a new ad set or a separate draft
- Clones of a live campaign as new drafts, one draft per copy
- Imports of existing campaigns, including from another ad account you have access to
- Structure templates and pipeline cards. Moving a card into a column that publishes asks for your approval first
- Agent Tasks. It can build and save one that's off. Turning one on, changing one that's on, or running one asks for your approval first
- Proposed targets and business numbers, when you tell it yours. They stay proposals until you confirm them in Settings, Agent
- New ad images in your brand's style. They stay out of your creative library until you save them or use one in an ad. See Create ad images with the agent
Live campaigns
A campaign that's already live on the platform is treated carefully:
- Budget: the agent can change the daily or lifetime budget of a live campaign or ad set, after you approve the card. Ads don't have budgets.
- On and off: it pauses a live campaign, ad set or ad, or turns one back on, after you approve the card.
- Ads and settings: with your approval it can swap the creatives on a live ad set while keeping each ad's copy, and publish the changes you made in the builder with Publish Changes. It attaches a lead form only to a draft ad set, not to a live one. On Meta it can also change a few fields directly on the platform: name, status, budget, spend cap, bid and end time. See Edit a live campaign.
Launching
When you ask to launch, the agent first checks the draft. If something is missing, it lists each problem and fixes what you ask it to fix. Once the draft is ready, it shows an approval card with what will be published, then stops. It launches only after you select Approve, and checks the launch status before it tells you the campaign is live.
Pause and resume the agent
Settings, Agent is headed with your brand's name, Agent controls and a pill with the agent's state, such as Ask-first, Read-only or Paused. Under it a line says what the agent does: "It changes things in Meta only when you ask in chat, approve a suggestion, or run a workflow with an agent step."
- Open Settings, then Agent.
- Select Pause at the top right.
- Add a Reason if you like. It's optional, and Koast support sees it.
- Select Stop all agent activity.
The dialog says what pausing does: "Monitoring, objectives, proposals and execution stop. Data connections stay in place. Nothing changes in Meta. Workflow steps that ask Koast to change something stop too."
While the agent is paused:
- It makes no changes for this brand: not in this chat, not in other chats and not in the agent steps of your Agent Tasks. It still reads and answers. Ask it to change something and it tells you it's stopped.
- Daily suggestions stop, and the open ones are withdrawn.
- Agent Tasks and automations you set up keep running. Pause those separately if you want them to stop too.
- The pill reads Paused, and the line under the header says when and by whom, for example "Stopped since Sep 19, 2026, 8:52 AM by Maya Okafor".
You can also ask the agent to stop in a chat ("stop changing things"). It stops itself for the brand, and Agent controls say it was stopped "by the agent, when asked in chat". It can't turn itself back on.
To turn it back on, select Resume. Anyone on the team can pause the agent, View Only teammates included, but resuming needs edit access. If Koast support stopped it, the page reads "Koast support must turn it back on."
When nobody is watching
Agent Tasks can run the agent on a schedule. In those unattended runs the agent can't ask you anything. If the instructions are ambiguous or missing something, it doesn't guess: it says what's unclear and stops. A change that asks first isn't made on the spot. Koast files it as a step approval on Home instead, and the run waits until it's settled. Approve it and the change runs; it expires after 24 hours, and it's withdrawn if the run is cancelled. A change that's Off in Permissions is refused. See Approvals and the Sign-off queue and Scheduled agent flows.
What it can't do
- See pixel firing on your site, domain verification or billing and payment methods. It tells you what it can see in Koast and suggests checking the rest with your developer or your ad platform's support.
- Watch videos. It looks at images you attach or pick (up to 12 a message) and at every image it makes, but from a video it sees only one frame.
- Work outside ad campaign management. Ask it to write code and it declines.