Getting Started
Core concepts
The canonical glossary of terms used across Swan.
This page defines the terms used throughout these docs and inside Swan itself. Each concept has one canonical name — where the product UI or your team uses a different word for the same thing, that’s noted as an alias.
Trigger
An automation: a set of instructions, the toolkits Swan is allowed to use, and a source that starts it (a schedule, a webhook, a CRM event, an app event, a website visitor signal, and more). See how triggers work.
Sequence
A multi-step outreach flow sent to a contact — a series of email and/or LinkedIn steps with waits and branching between them, sent through a single sender. You might also hear “sequence” — in Swan today that’s the same thing. See how sequences work.
Task
An item Swan creates on the Desk for a human to look at or act on — for example, a message waiting on your approval, or something Swan flagged as needing a decision. Internally called a “review item,” but always referred to as a task. See Desk and tasks.
Run / execution
One pass of the agent doing work — a chat reply, a trigger firing, or a sub-agent working on one entity. The UI may label this a “job.” See executions and history.
Sender
An email or LinkedIn account you’ve connected for Swan to send messages from. See senders and connected accounts.
Credits
The unit Swan’s actions are metered in. Most tool calls and executions consume credits from your org’s balance. See credits.
Org knowledge
Structured information about your business that Swan reasons from: your value proposition, competitive positioning, ICP definitions, and personas. Distinct from memory (see below). See org knowledge.
Memory
Freeform notes Swan keeps about your org, contacts, or ongoing work — less structured than org knowledge, used for context that doesn’t fit a fixed field. See memory.
Skill
A reusable set of instructions that tells Swan how to approach a specific kind of task, so it behaves consistently each time that work comes up. See skills.
Template
A pre-built workflow from the Template Library that you can install and adapt for your own org, rather than building a trigger or sequence from scratch. Alias: you’ll sometimes see templates and configured triggers informally called “plays”, and a trigger’s instructions called its “playbook”. See templates.
Desk
The screen that surfaces everything Swan wants a human to see or act on: tasks, outreach awaiting approval, and execution activity. See Desk and tasks.
Toolkit
A group of related tools Swan can use — for example, everything needed to work with HubSpot, or everything needed to manage tags. Toolkits come from three places: built into Swan, connected through the third-party integration layer, or added as a custom MCP server. Your org can enable or disable individual toolkits and set who needs to approve which of their actions.
Connected account
A third-party login (a CRM, an inbox, a LinkedIn profile, a Slack workspace, and so on) that you’ve authorized Swan to act through. A connected account is what makes a related toolkit or sender usable.
Target market / ICP segment
The definition of the kind of company you sell to — the firmographic and behavioral criteria Swan uses to identify a good-fit account. Configured as part of org knowledge.
Persona
A defined buyer type within a target market — the role, seniority, and characteristics of the person Swan should be trying to reach at a good-fit company.
Funnel stage
Where a company sits in your pipeline (for example, an early awareness stage through to a closed stage), tracked on the company record and used to reason about what to do next.
Tag
A label you or Swan can apply to a company to mark it for a purpose (for example, to include or exclude it from something), separate from its funnel stage.
List
A saved set of companies grouped together, used to scope which companies a trigger, sequence, or query applies to.