Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame · Certified Partner since 2010
Agents are an architecture, not a chat box.
The first week is in the org, reading what already exists. Five planes decide whether a digital worker is production or a demo: where people meet it, what it is allowed to call, what runs the step, what it remembers, and how the write survives a timeout. The honest no: if the work is a software factory with a named delivery date, we are the wrong partner.
Certified Partner since 2010 · MVP Hall of Fame · 200+ agents in production · UAE and US desks
The five planes
How the work is organised.
Read down. Skip one of these in your org and you get a specific failure, not a general slowdown.
- 01
Experience
Slack · Experience Cloud · Portals · Voice · Generative UI
- 02
Control and governance
Identity on the hop · Policy · Rate limits · Audit
- 03
Runtime and agents
Agentforce · Code agents · SDKs · A2A · MCP tools
- 04
Context and memory
Data Cloud · Graph · Vectors · Decision history
- 05
Durable capability
Queues · Retries · IDP · Long-running jobs
Mermaid source
flowchart TD
EXP["1 Experience: Slack, Experience Cloud, portals, voice"] --> CTL["2 Control: identity, policy, rate, audit"]
CTL --> RUN["3 Runtime: Agentforce, code agents, SDKs"]
CTL --> MEM["4 Memory: source of truth, working context, durable memory"]
CTL --> DUR["5 Durable: queues, retries, long jobs, writes"]
RUN --> MEM
RUN --> DUR
DUR --> SOR["Systems of record: Salesforce, ERP, files"]Five axioms
What we believe before we design anything.
These are the arguments we will have in week one. Better to have them now.
Plane by plane
Each plane, and what breaks without it.
Experience plane
Slack, Experience Cloud, portals, and voice. Skip it and the agent lives in a tab nobody opens.
Control plane
One front door for tool calls and model calls. Skip it and nobody can answer who wrote that record.
Runtime plane
Agentforce, code agents, SDKs. Skip it and every step is forced through one product surface.
Memory plane
Truth, working context, and decision history. Skip it and the agent re-asks what it was told.
Durable plane
Queues, retries, and long jobs. Skip it and a timeout becomes a double posting.
Salesforce and MuleSoft map
See which plane each cloud serves once you wire agents into Salesforce.
How Mindcat helps
Diagnostic, first slice, then the operating model.
Three engagements that already exist. No new pricing product, no invented savings.
01
Diagnostic
Where the governance debt sits, which writes have no rollback, and which steps should never have been a model call. Readiness and governance are the existing services.
02
First slice
One named desk end to end: experience surface, gateway path, runtime, memory, and a write someone can reverse. Shadow mode before write authority.
03
Operating model
Specifications, guardrails, and a review cadence so the next agent is a configuration, not a project.
Mermaid source
flowchart TD
A["Diagnostic: map governance debt and write blast radius"] --> B["First slice: one desk, one runtime, one governed write"]
B --> C["Operating model: specs, shadow mode, fleet ops"]Engagements
The work behind each plane.
Questions
What we actually say.
- Is this a replacement for the five-layer AI stack?
- No. The stack is what we install: models, agents, memory, identity, governance. The planes are how the work is organised around it. Same practice, two views.
- Do we need all five planes on day one?
- No. You need to know which one you are skipping and what that costs. Most stalled pilots skipped control or memory and called it a platform problem.
- Is this Salesforce-only?
- No. Salesforce and MuleSoft carry most of it in the orgs we work in, so that is the language we use in a diagnostic. The planes still hold when your runtime is a code agent and your system of record is a warehouse.
- Where does the first slice usually land?
- A desk with a named owner, a documented process, and a write that can be reversed. Claims, invoices, cases, and field service are the usual four.
Next
What to read next.
The brief · one email
Name the desk. Name the write.
We will tell you which plane is missing and what it costs to skip it.
