# Meet the Arclings: every agent gets its own robot

What an Arcling is made of, how each agent gets one that no other agent in your organization has, and what its chest lights tell you

Oct 23, 2026 · Releases · 6 min read · https://arclyx.ai/blog/ai-agent-avatar

## Summary

In Arclyx, every AI agent avatar is an Arcling: a small flat robot drawn from a head, eyes, a top and a mouth, on one of seven colours. It's a picture, not a talking video avatar. There are 400 faces, and when you create an agent, Arclyx gives it one that no other agent in your organization has yet, while faces last. It keeps that face on every screen, and its chest lights show how many connectors it started with.

## Key Takeaways

- **An Arcling is an avatar, not a presenter.** Tools such as Synthesia use "AI avatar" for a talking video presenter [Source 1]. An Arcling is a small drawn robot that marks one agent.
- **400 faces from four parts.** Four heads, five sets of eyes, five tops and four mouths, on one of seven grounds.
- **Yours alone, and kept.** A new agent gets a face no other agent in your organization has, while faces last, and keeps it until someone shuffles it.
- **Chest lights mean connectors.** One light per connector the agent was created with, up to four, until a shuffle draws a new set. The first one pulses while it's running.
- **Everywhere the agent is.** Beside every line it writes, next to each run, on Home and big at the top of its own page.
- **Shuffle for a new one.** Shuffle look on the agent's Config tab gives it a new face that no other agent in your organization has.

## What is an Arcling?

An Arcling is the robot avatar every Arclyx agent gets: a small flat drawing built from a head, eyes, a top and a mouth, standing on one of seven brand colours. It isn't a talking video avatar and it doesn't speak. It's a face that tells you which agent you're looking at, wherever that agent appears in the app.

![Twenty-four Arclings in a grid, each a small flat robot with a different head, eyes, top and mouth on a cobalt, ink, stone, frost or white ground.](https://arclyx.ai/blog/ai-agent-avatar/img/arcling-wall.aaa05a01-1600.webp)

The name is ours. The usual alternative is initials, and initials all look alike in a list of runs. An Arcling has a shape you can spot from across the screen. Meet them all, and build one by hand, on [the Arclings page](https://arclyx.ai/arclings).

## Why give an AI agent an avatar?

So you can tell agents apart at a glance. Once a team has a few agents, their runs, messages and alerts sit side by side on Home, in Activity and in chat. A name you have to read is slow; a face you recognise is instant. The avatar also carries a little state, such as whether the agent is running and which tools it uses.

That's a different job from the avatar in a support widget. There, one AI agent talks to customers, and the advice is a single simple image such as a logo or a mascot: Zendesk recommends 50 by 50 pixels [Source 2]. In Arclyx you may have a dozen agents doing different jobs for different people, so each needs a face of its own.

## How is each Arcling made?

Each Arcling is made from four parts, which multiply to 400 faces, plus a ground and its chest lights. Four heads, five sets of eyes, five tops and four mouths give the face. One of seven grounds sits behind it. The lights on its chest come from the tools it starts with, so two agents with the same face can still look different.

| Part | How many | The choices |
|---|---|---|
| Head | 4 | Round, box, arch or hexagon |
| Eyes | 5 | Dots, pills, one eye, a visor or squares |
| Top | 5 | Nothing, an antenna, ears, spikes or a halo |
| Mouth | 4 | None, a line, a smile or a grille |
| Ground | 7 | Frost, cobalt, ink, white, deep cobalt, cobalt tint or stone |
| Chest lights | 1 to 4 | One per connector it was created with; a shuffle draws a new number |

![Four Arclings standing on four grounds: a round head with dots and an antenna on frost, a box head with a visor and ears on cobalt, an arch head with pills and a halo on ink, and a hexagon head with squares and spikes on stone.](https://arclyx.ai/blog/ai-agent-avatar/img/arcling-parts.a269f217-1600.webp)

Arclyx can also dress the whole crew for the season. Each agent picks its own outfit from the season's wardrobe, so the team never wears one uniform.

## Will my agent always look the same?

Yes, until you change it. When an agent is created, Arclyx picks its Arcling and stores it, so the agent looks the same on every screen and every day. The pick goes to a face no other agent in your organization has yet. Once all 400 faces are in use, it looks for a face and ground pair nobody has.

To change it, press Shuffle look on the agent's Config tab, or Shuffle on the character itself at the top of its page. Anyone who can edit the agent can shuffle it. Each shuffle gives a new face, never the one it had, and again one that no other agent in your organization has, while faces last.

On [the Arclings page](https://arclyx.ai/arclings) it works differently, for fun: type a name and the Arcling comes from the name itself, so the same name always gets the same one.

## What do the chest lights mean?

When an agent is created, the lights on its Arcling's chest count its connectors: one light per connector, from one to four. An agent that reads Gmail and posts to Slack has two. The first light pulses while the agent is running, so you can see it working from a list without opening anything.

A [remote MCP server](https://arclyx.ai/blog/remote-mcp-server) counts as one connector however many tools it offers. The lights are set once, with the face: adding a tool later doesn't add a light, and a shuffle draws a new number of lights along with the new face. For what an agent actually did with its tools on a run, the [AI agent observability page](https://arclyx.ai/product/observability) shows every call.

## Where do you see Arclings in Arclyx?

Everywhere the agent shows up, at the size the place needs. The same Arcling sits beside every line the agent writes, next to each of its runs, on the Home cards for agents that need you, and big at the top of its own page.

| Where | Size | What it's doing there |
|---|---|---|
| Activity and chat | 28px | Beside every line the agent writes |
| Run lines | 40px | Next to each run in a list |
| Home | 48px | On the cards for the agents that need you |
| The agent's page | Cover | Big, with its chest lights, at the top of its page and its runs |

![The Agents page in Arclyx with example data: Inbox triage, Pipeline digest and Meeting brief under Operations, and three agents shared with everyone in Acme, each with its Arcling on its card.](https://arclyx.ai/blog/ai-agent-avatar/img/agents-page-covers.5e9ce254-1600.webp)

The [AI agents for business](https://arclyx.ai/agents) pages show the agents behind those faces, and the page on [how to create an AI agent](https://arclyx.ai/product) shows how to make one of your own.

## Can you make your own?

On the site, yes: [the Arclings page](https://arclyx.ai/arclings) has a builder where you pick each part by hand and make your Arcling say hi, walk, hop or dance. In the app, every agent gets its own when it's created, and Shuffle gives it another. You don't pick parts by hand there, which is what keeps every face in your organization different.

## Sources

1. Synthesia — *AI avatars* (feature page, checked 23 October 2026). [https://www.synthesia.io/features/avatars](https://www.synthesia.io/features/avatars)
2. Zendesk — *Configuring an AI agent's name and avatar (Legacy)* (Zendesk help, checked 23 October 2026). [https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6447066520986](https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6447066520986)