Kantata Agent Studio lets firms build AI agents in plain language

Conversational agent creation for services firms

Kantata has released Agent Studio, a tool that allows professional services firms to create custom AI agents by describing tasks in natural language, the company announced. The release addresses what Kantata characterizes as agent proliferation in the professional services automation market, where vendors ship narrow-purpose agents that each handle a single function like resourcing or risk reporting.

Agent Studio operates within Kantata's Expertise Engine and works through conversation. Users describe the job they need done, and Kantata's Expertise Agent — which the company calls the first AI superagent for professional services, launched in June — assembles and refines the new agent through continued dialogue. The system validates inputs and outputs before publishing. No forms or code are required.

Once deployed, agents can be triggered manually or automatically through workflows. The intended users are practice leads and delivery directors who need to standardize recurring deliverables. Kantata frames the tool as eliminating what it calls a "prompt tax" — the repeated cycle of drafting and reformatting instructions every time a team member explains the same task to an AI tool.

Governance and expertise differentiation

Kantata CEO Michael Speranza positioned the release around expertise rather than automation efficiency. "When it comes to professional services, AI isn't the differentiator — expertise is," Speranza said. "Any vendor can give a firm a tool to build AI agents. But if all you're doing is automating processes, you're just racing to the bottom and simply reducing costs, rather than developing differentiation."

CTO Vikas Nehru emphasized governance, calling an agent that improvises "a liability in a business where the same deliverable has to hold up in front of a client every time."

Basware, a Finnish invoice automation company that uses Kantata's software in its professional services operation, provided a customer perspective. Chief Customer Officer Mark Johnston said he wants his services team with customers rather than "doing documentation, figuring out resourcing and entering their billable time," and that Kantata enables the firm to build agents to absorb that work.

Why it matters

The release reflects a strategic bet that durable competitive advantage in AI comes from embedding proprietary expertise rather than generic automation. Kantata cited Forrester analyst Ted Schadler, who has written that the only sustainable path to business advantage now runs through putting a company's own knowledge and expertise to work in AI models and agents. For professional services firms where delivery quality and client trust depend on consistent execution of specialized knowledge, the ability to encode standards once and apply them uniformly addresses a real operational friction point.

Agent Studio is available now and in use by customers, according to Kantata. The company formed in 2022 from the merger of Mavenlink and Kimble Applications and reports that more than 1,500 organizations now run its software.

These details were first reported by SiliconANGLE.