Variables and Action Filters: an Agentforce Architecture Guide

What is Variables and Action Filters in Agentforce architecture?

In Agentforce architecture, hide actions from the model when deterministic business conditions are not satisfied. This guide explains the design decisions, controls, and implementation checks needed to apply the pattern in production.

Instructions can ask a model not to use an action, but an action filter can make that action unavailable. That distinction separates behavioral guidance from an enforceable business control.

Variables hold evaluated context such as customer tier, eligibility, or whether a prior step succeeded. Filters use that state to decide which capabilities the reasoning engine is allowed to see.

Design rules the model cannot negotiate

• Use variables for explicit state, not for facts the model must infer from conversational wording.
• Make an unavailable action disappear from the model's action set instead of merely telling the model not to call it.
• Persist important business state on a record when it must survive a new session.
• Keep eligibility logic close to the authoritative data and make the result auditable.

A practical filtering workflow

1. Name the protected action and write the eligibility rule as a Boolean expression.
2. Identify which inputs come from records, verified actions, or session variables.
3. Test eligible, ineligible, boundary, repeated-request, and new-session scenarios.
4. Trace the run and verify that the action was absent—not simply unused—when the rule evaluated false.