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Complete Worked Example: Customer Support Workflow

Build a customer support agent from scratch, query it, and combine it with a triage agent into a team. Every YAML block here is validated against the Ark CRD schemas in CI.

Prerequisites

  • Ark installed (see the Quickstart)
  • kubectl pointing at the cluster
  • A model named default — ark models create default if missing
  • jq for the pretty-print steps
kubectl get pods -n ark-system
kubectl get models

Step 1: Working Directory

mkdir -p customer-support-bot/{agents,queries,teams}
cd customer-support-bot

Step 2: Support Agent

cat > agents/support-agent.yaml <<'EOF'
apiVersion: ark.mckinsey.com/v1alpha1
kind: Agent
metadata:
  name: support-agent
spec:
  description: Handles customer support inquiries
  modelRef:
    name: default
  prompt: |
    You are a helpful customer support agent for a SaaS platform.
    Answer politely, professionally, and concisely.
 
    Common topics:
    - Password resets
    - Account access
    - Billing questions
    - Feature inquiries
EOF

Step 3: Deploy

kubectl apply -f agents/support-agent.yaml
kubectl get agent support-agent

Expect support-agent ready.

Step 4: Test Query

cat > queries/test-password-reset.yaml <<'EOF'
apiVersion: ark.mckinsey.com/v1alpha1
kind: Query
metadata:
  name: test-password-reset
spec:
  input: "How do I reset my password?"
  target:
    type: agent
    name: support-agent
EOF
 
kubectl apply -f queries/test-password-reset.yaml

Step 5: Watch It Run

kubectl get query test-password-reset -w

Phase progression (lowercase per the CRD): pending → running → done. Ctrl+C to stop.

Step 6: View the Response

kubectl get query test-password-reset \
  -o jsonpath='{.status.response.content}'

Example:

To reset your password:

1. Go to the login page
2. Click "Forgot Password"
3. Enter your registered email
4. Open the reset link from the email
5. Set a new password

No email after 5 minutes? Check your spam folder.

Step 7: Full Details

kubectl describe query test-password-reset

Shows phase, the response, token usage, and start/end times.

Step 8: Dashboard

ark dashboard

Opens the dashboard in your browser. Navigate to Queries, open test-password-reset, and inspect input, response, timeline, tokens, and model.

Step 9: Another Scenario

cat > queries/test-billing.yaml <<'EOF'
apiVersion: ark.mckinsey.com/v1alpha1
kind: Query
metadata:
  name: test-billing
spec:
  input: "How can I upgrade my subscription plan?"
  target:
    type: agent
    name: support-agent
EOF
 
kubectl apply -f queries/test-billing.yaml
kubectl get query test-billing \
  -o jsonpath='{.status.response.content}'

Step 10: Triage Agent

A second agent that classifies the request before support answers.

cat > agents/triage-agent.yaml <<'EOF'
apiVersion: ark.mckinsey.com/v1alpha1
kind: Agent
metadata:
  name: triage-agent
spec:
  description: Categorizes and routes customer inquiries
  modelRef:
    name: default
  prompt: |
    Categorize the inquiry into one of:
    - technical: Password resets, login issues, bugs
    - billing: Subscription, payment, invoices
    - sales: Upgrades, new features, pricing
 
    Respond with just the category name.
EOF
 
kubectl apply -f agents/triage-agent.yaml

Step 11: Team

Triage first, then support — sequential strategy.

cat > teams/support-team.yaml <<'EOF'
apiVersion: ark.mckinsey.com/v1alpha1
kind: Team
metadata:
  name: support-team
spec:
  description: Triage then answer
  strategy: sequential
  members:
    - type: agent
      name: triage-agent
    - type: agent
      name: support-agent
EOF
 
kubectl apply -f teams/support-team.yaml
 
cat > queries/team-test.yaml <<'EOF'
apiVersion: ark.mckinsey.com/v1alpha1
kind: Query
metadata:
  name: team-test
spec:
  input: "I want to upgrade my plan and my payment failed"
  target:
    type: team
    name: support-team
EOF
 
kubectl apply -f queries/team-test.yaml
kubectl get query team-test -o jsonpath='{.status.response}' | jq

Next Steps

Last updated on
Quickstart