A plain-English guide to AI agents for your practice

If you've heard the term "AI agent" and your eyes glazed over, this post is for you. I'm going to skip the jargon and explain what this stuff actually does in the context of running a health or wellness practice.

What is an AI agent, really?

An agent is software that does a task on your behalf, start to finish, without you hovering over it.

You already use simple versions of this. An email autoresponder is a basic agent. A scheduling tool that sends appointment reminders is another one. What's changed recently is that agents have gotten much better at handling tasks that used to require a human making decisions along the way.

The difference between a simple automation and an agent is judgement. An automation follows a rigid script: if this, then that. An agent can look at context and adjust. If a client hasn't booked in six weeks, it sends a different message than if they missed one appointment. If someone fills out an intake form at 11pm, it waits until morning to follow up.

What agents can do in a wellness practice

Here are the tasks I see agents handling well, right now, for real practitioners.

Client intake is the big one. A new lead fills out a form on your website. The agent collects their health history through a guided questionnaire, checks your calendar, books the first session, and sends a welcome email with what to expect. You get a notification that says "new client booked for Thursday." That's it.

Post-session follow-ups are another easy win. After you see a client, the agent sends a session summary, any exercises or resources you've assigned, and a check-in message a few days later. Clients feel looked after. You didn't write a single email.

Then there's rebooking and recall. People fall off. Life gets busy. The agent notices when someone hasn't booked in a while and sends a nudge at the right time. Your schedule stays full without you chasing anyone.

Resource delivery is simpler but saves real time. The right PDF, video, or meal plan goes to the client based on what you discussed in their session. No more digging through folders and manually attaching files.

Review collection works the same way. After a client hits a milestone, the agent asks for a review or referral. Runs quietly in the background. Your Google reviews grow without you asking anyone in person.

What agents can't do

This is just as important. An agent can't replace your clinical judgement. It can't read a room. It can't tell when a client needs to talk about something that isn't on the agenda.

Agents are good at structured, repeatable tasks. Things that follow patterns. They're bad at anything that requires reading between the lines or making a call that depends on context only a human would pick up on.

I always tell practitioners: the agent handles the work around the session so you can be fully present during it.

What it looks like day to day

Once a system is running, most practitioners barely think about it. Here's a typical day:

You wake up and check your phone. There's a notification that a new client completed intake and booked for next week. You glance at it, move on.

You see three clients. After each one, you spend two minutes jotting down notes and selecting which resources to send. The agent handles the rest.

At the end of the day, you don't sit down to send follow-ups or check who needs rebooking. It's already done. You close your laptop and go home.

That's it. Fewer hours on admin.

Where to start

If this sounds useful but you're not sure where to begin, pick one pain point. Don't try to automate everything at once. What's the one task that eats the most time or falls through the cracks? For most practitioners, it's either intake or follow-ups. Start there.

Keep your existing tools. A good agent system plugs into what you already use, your calendar, your email, your forms. You shouldn't have to learn a new platform.

And get one thing working well before adding more. See the results. Then decide if you want to expand. Everything is modular so you're never locked into a system that's bigger than what you need.

The honest truth

AI agents are tools. They work well when they're set up for the right job and poorly when they're forced into the wrong one.

But for the tasks that eat your evenings, the admin you didn't go to school for, they save real hours every week. I've seen it firsthand with the practitioners I work with.

If you want to talk through whether this fits your practice, I'm around. No agenda.