Tasks vs. quick questions
Zahen gives you two ways to get work done: a quick question in the Agent Workspace and a task you start from the agent tasks area. Choosing the right one makes a real difference to what happens next.
What a quick question does
Section titled “What a quick question does”When you ask a question in the Agent Workspace, the assistant retrieves the most relevant approved documents you’re allowed to see, builds a cited answer from them, and stops. That’s all it does. Nothing is written, sent, or changed.
Use a quick question when you want to look something up — policy details, procedure steps, a rule that applies to your situation.
See Ask a question for how the workspace works.
What a task does
Section titled “What a task does”A task is stateful, multi-step work. The agent receives your goal, plans a sequence of steps, executes them one at a time, saves progress at each checkpoint, and can take real external actions — looking up a live record, drafting a document, sending a notification.
Because tasks can act, they carry explicit risk levels, and any step classified as high-risk pauses for a human to approve before it proceeds. See Risk levels & approvals.
Quick comparison
Section titled “Quick comparison”| Quick question | Agent task | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Retrieves and answers | Plans, acts, and checkpoints |
| External actions | Never | Yes — with approval gates for high-risk steps |
| Progress saved | No | Yes — resumes from last checkpoint if interrupted |
| Result | A cited answer | A completed outcome (or a record of why it couldn’t complete) |
| Approval required | No | Sometimes — depends on the risk level of each step |
When to start a task
Section titled “When to start a task”Start a task when:
- The work involves doing something, not just looking something up.
- The goal spans multiple steps that depend on each other.
- You need a record of what the agent did and why.
When you just need a fast, cited answer, a quick question is quicker and simpler.