TL;DR: External Workmates allow you to build an AI agent on your own agent platform (starting with Claude Managed Agents) and bring it into Wrike as a colleague with its own user account. Workmates can read across multiple spaces, assess risks, turn meeting notes or briefs into work, and connect to your external tools like Google Drive, Figma, or your CRM. Now available in Wrike Labs!
Hi everyone! 👋
We’re excited to introduce a brand-new capability in Wrike Labs: External Workmates!
Please Note: During the Wrike Labs phase, we’re opening access to Business plans and above so everyone can experience and help test this feature. Upon General Availability (GA), it will be available for Pinnacle plans and above.
An external Workmate is an AI agent that you build and run on your own agent platform, and then bring into Wrike as a colleague. It keeps the name you gave it on your platform, gets a standard Workmate picture, and receives a dedicated Wrike user account.
Your team interacts with it just like any other team member: @mention it in a comment or assign it a work item , and it answers directly in the same thread.
Once enabled from Wrike Labs, under Account Management, there is a dedicated button/tab called Workmates where you can add a workmate and see all of your added workmates.
Note: Bringing in an external Workmate is done in your account settings. It needs the View Workmates in account settings and Manage Workmates permissions, which Admins hold by default and the account owner can grant to other user types from the Full License bucket.
🌟 What Can External Workmates Do?
An external Workmate reads and reasons across your work, then acts on it:
- Work across several spaces: A Workmate isn't tied to a single space. Its user account holds as many spaces as you add it to, allowing it to read across those spaces and answer questions in one space using context from another.
- Read around a question: When mentioned on an item, it follows parent, children, and neighbor items, reading comments and history before forming a view.
- Assess risk: Reports what threatens delivery, the evidence behind each risk, and suggested actions.
- Turn a meeting into work: Reads a transcript or notes, records decisions, and creates follow-up tasks assigned to the right people.
- Turn a request into a project: Reads a brief, proposes a project structure, and identifies unanswered questions in the brief.
- Reach your other tools: Connect your Workmate on your agent platform to external tools (such as Google Drive, Figma, or your CRM). It can read a brief sitting in Google Drive and build the project in Wrike in one job.
- Ask before it acts: Pauses and presents choices in the comment thread whenever its next step depends on information only you know.
🧠 External Workmates vs. AI Agents
Wrike offers two kinds of AI colleagues depending on where your work happens:
Feature | AI Agent | External Workmate |
|---|
Where you build it | In Wrike, in the agent builder | On your own agent platform |
Where instructions live | In Wrike | On your platform |
What it can reach | The space it is configured in | Every space on its user account & connected tools (Google Drive, Figma, CRM) |
Who runs it | Wrike | Your platform provider, on your account |
How it starts | A configured trigger | A mention in a comment or task assignment |
⚙️ Supported Agent Platforms
External Workmates currently support agents built on Claude (Anthropic) - Managed Agents.
Your agent lives in a workspace on your own Anthropic account, meaning you maintain full control and pay Anthropic directly for what it uses at their published rates. Wrike does not charge for the connection, and your Workmate's user account does not consume a Wrike license.
Anthropic's documentation is the full account of building one: the Managed Agents overview explains the pieces, and the quickstart walks through creating one end to end.
🧩 How to Set Up an External Workmate
To set up an external Workmate, you will need an account and API key from Anthropic, as well as the View Workmates in account settings and Manage Workmates permissions in Wrike.
1.Build Your Agent on Claude Managed Agents:
- Create a new agent in the Claude console and name it after its job.
- Choose a model and write its instructions.
- Do not add Wrike as a connection here. Wrike adds its own MCP server, with a credential, when you create the Workmate in the next step. Wrike's MCP server documentation describes what that server can read and change.
- Leave the tool permission setting on auto. This lets the agent decide for itself which actions it can take directly and which ones need your approval.
- Create an API key and copy it. You will paste it into Wrike.
Note: Wrike takes the agent's name exactly as you wrote it, and the name cannot be changed in Wrike afterwards. Give each agent a name no other agent on your account shares, or your colleagues will see two Workmates they cannot tell apart in the mention menu.
Note: You do not sign in to Wrike here yet. Your Workmate gets its own Wrike identity when you connect it, and that identity is what decides what it can see.
Tip: Treat the API key the way you would treat a password. It gives Wrike access to your Anthropic account, and anyone holding it has the same access.
You are ready to continue when the console shows your agent as Active, with the model you chose and your instructions in its configuration.
2.Connect Your Agent to Wrike as a Workmate:
- Go to Account Settings → Workmates and click + Workmate.
- Select an agent. Three fields on one screen
- Select Claude (Anthropic) as the provider
- API key - opens a Saved API keys dialog. Add the key you copied from the Claude console and give it a label you will recognize, or pick one you saved earlier or use an already added key. Wrike keeps added keys for next time.
- Agent - Wrike lists the agents it finds in the account that key belongs to. Choose the one you built.
- Select a space. Two settings:
Belongs to - the single space your Workmate belongs to. It can be added to other spaces later from that space's own settings or from the Workmate’s details page.
Sharing - how your Workmate spreads to other spaces, and with it, how much of your account it can draw on. Open lets any space admin with the permission add it to a space they run. Restricted keeps that to the admins of the space it belongs to.
Note: Sharing arrives set to Open, and Open is what lets a Workmate become useful across a whole account. Each space an admin adds it to is another space it can read, so a Workmate that has been invited into delivery, comms and the PMO can answer a question about one of them using what it read in the others. Each of those spaces brings its own admins, who can share it onward in turn, so its reach grows without you doing anything. Choose Restricted when you want its reach to stay where you put it - a Workmate handling one team's confidential work, for instance.
- Permissions - the user type whose permissions your Workmate will have in Wrike. Choose the one you would give a colleague doing this job. Regular User suits most Workmates. If the standard user types are too broad or too narrow for what you want this one to do, build a custom user type and choose that.
- Scope - where your Workmate can read information and act. Choose Specific spaces.
- The list below shows the space it belongs to, with an Access role beside it. Add more with + Space.
- Wrike skills lists the skills Wrike adds so your Workmate can do Wrike work. Open it to read what each one does.
- Click Create.
Tip: Start with one space. A Workmate can only see what its user account can see, so one space is both the safest way to begin and enough to judge whether it is useful.
🛠️ What Wrike Creates
When you complete the setup, Wrike automatically creates:
- A real user account: Features your agent's name, profile, and a standard Workmate picture. It appears in member lists, mentions menus, comments, and task assignments just like a human team member.
- A set of permissions: Governs everything it can see and do. You can widen or narrow its scope and access roles across spaces on the Workmates page just as you would for any colleague.
- Built-in Wrike skills: Automatically adds Wrike instructions for key tasks, including turning requests into work, meeting intelligence, project risk assessment, portfolio risk/value assessment, and morning summaries.
Note: Skills you already gave your agent on your own platform are separate from the ones Wrike adds and are not listed here. Where the two overlap, your agent holds instructions for the same job twice. Additionally, your Workmate's user account does not consume a Wrike license.
💬 How to Work With Your Workmate
Starting a job is as simple as asking a colleague:
- Open the item the work is about (and attach any relevant documents/briefs).
- Mention your Workmate in a comment and type your request, or assign the item directly to it.
- Your Workmate replies within a minute to confirm it picked up the job, reads the item and surrounding context, and replies in the same thread.
Note: Assigning a work item to your Workmate starts it as well. The item's title and description become the ask, so write what you want in the description before you assign it.
💡 What You Can Ask For
Within its assigned permissions, a Workmate can do what a colleague with the same user type could do: create work items, write comments, assign work, and update fields via the Wrike MCP server connection.
Here are three core prompts your Workmate excels at:
Risk Assessment: "Give me a risk assessment on this project. What's at risk and why?"
- What you get: An overall judgment, risks backed by evidence with item links, suggested next steps, and a list of uncheckable items.
Meeting Follow-ups: "Turn this meeting into work: what was decided, who took what, and what needs a decision." (Attach transcript/notes first)
- What you get: Key decisions recorded in the team's words and created follow-up tasks assigned directly to the responsible owners.
Project Scoping: "Turn this request into a project we can run. Show me the shape before you create anything, and tell me what is missing." (Attach brief first)
- What you get: A proposed project structure, additions beyond the brief, and highlighted open questions.
Tip: Ask your Workmate to show you its proposal before creating anything, it's the fastest way to learn how it reasons across your account.
❓ When Your Workmate Needs a Decision
Give your Workmate a clear instruction and it carries it out. When a choice requires human input, it stops and presents options with a recommended path forward in the comment thread.
- Re-mention to continue: Your Workmate wakes strictly on a @mention . You must @mention it in your reply thread to resume the task .
- No guessing: Nothing is created or changed until you approve it. If a next step depends on information only you know (such as confirming conflicting dates or assignee agreement), it asks before taking action.
Limitations & Troubleshooting
🎯 Workmate vs. Wrike Report
- Best for Workmates: Questions requiring reading around items, comments, and history, or cross-team insights across spaces it belongs to.
- Best for Wrike Reports: Exact counts/groupings across thousands of items, effort/workload metrics, task dependencies, or status duration tracking.
- Account Bounds: Assigns work only to Wrike users (non-users are named in task descriptions) and selects from existing field options.
🛠️ Quick Troubleshooting
- Not appearing in @mention menu? Log out and back into Wrike to refresh your session menu.
- Replies appearing on another item? Workmates handle one conversation at a time, wait for a reply before starting a new request on a different item.
- Empty agent list after adding API key? Ensure your API key was generated inside the specific Claude console workspace where your agent lives.
- Acknowledged but went quiet? Check the agent's session log in the Claude console to see execution steps, tool calls, or errors.
- Cannot see expected work? Verify that the Workmate's user account has been added to that specific Wrike space.
📖 Read our dedicated Help Center articles for detailed instructions and to learn more about Workmates.
🆕 Explore some examples of Workmates in our Workmates Library & Inspiration forum 👈
This is early, and a small number of teams are doing it alongside us. If you get stuck, post your question in the comments below or in our Q&A forum, that is where we answer all questions about external Workmates.
💬 We’d love to hear from you!
What external tools are you planning to connect to your Workmates? Like this post? Drop a reaction (👍 Like / 🙂 Agree / 💡 Insightful), or share your thoughts, questions, and use cases in the comments below! 👇
