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Get Started with Tableau Agent


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Tableau Agent is an AI-powered authoring assistant built into Tableau Studio that lets you create and refine visualizations through natural conversation. Instead of manually configuring charts, calculated fields, and worksheets from scratch, you describe what you want — and Tableau Agent handles the rest, drawing on your connected data source to suggest, build, and apply changes directly in Tableau Studio.

Set up Tableau Agent

  1. Install Tableau Studio.
  2. Launch Tableau Studio.

  3. Open Tableau Agent by expanding the extensions menu and selecting Tableau Agent.

    Opening Tableau Agent from the extensions menu

  4. Review and accept the Anthropic EULA when prompted.
  5. Expand the menu in the top-right corner and select Settings.

  6. Specify the path to your local working folder.

    Tableau Agent Settings with the local working folder path

    tip Use a dedicated folder for each kind of work — for example analysis, production, or demos — so the agent scopes files, skills, and memory to that project.

  7. Verify that project assets, such as local skill markdown files, have loaded into that folder.

Note If your organization manages policy centrally, Tableau Agent features and project access may require additional admin approvals and environmental settings.

Use Tableau Agent to help visualize your data

With a template library, skill-based workflows, and tight integration with Tableau’s authoring surface, Tableau Agent is designed to accelerate your path from raw data to meaningful insight.

With your Tableau Agent window open, use natural language queries to create vizzes, troubleshoot calculations, or just brainstorm the best way to tell your story.

tip When working with published datasources in Tableau Studio, ensure they’re connected to your workbook before generating visualizations.

Use the chat UI

Chat configuration controls

The controls at the top of the Tableau Agent panel allow you to control the appearance of the agent, create new chats, and to access chat history and agent settings.

Chat configuration controls for New chat, Chats, and Settings

  • Three dot menu: Three-dot menu with New chat, Chats, and Settings
    • New Chat: Open a new chat with the agent and start a new context.
    • Chats: View a list of your past chats and select to recall them to the agent panel.
    • Settings:

      • Skills: View skills that are enabled for the agent and retain, temporarily disable, or delete them.

        Skills tab in Settings, where you can retain, disable, or delete skills

      • Memories: View memories (persistent rules that are always applied) and retain, temporarily disable, or delete them.

Chat input dialog

The Chat input dialog has a field to enter your prompt, and icons to manage and decide the behavior of your chat.

Tableau Agent dialog with prompt input field, and icons for show skills list, rewind chat, enter plan mode, enter auto-run mode, enter prompt/stop response chat, and copy chat.

  • Prompt input field: Enter your prompt here
  • Skills list: View and select skills
  • Rewind chat: Undo the last step of the chat
  • Plan mode: Enter thinking, plan-writing mode, take no actions
  • Auto-run mode: Tell the agent to do low risk actions without asking for permissions
  • Enter prompt/stop chat: Submit your prompt to the agent or tell it to stop working on a response
  • Copy chat: Copy the text of a chat to the clipboard

Use skills

Skills are reusable instructions and capabilities that enable advanced outcomes, including chart-generation workflows, local scripting support for assets like localhost, and specialized persona or archetype behaviors such as design review and administrative guidance.

Tableau Studio and Tableau MCP ship with a set of standard skills. They provide the default authoring behavior — templates, guidance, and procedures the agent applies. You can see the standard skills by hovering over the / icon in the chat input window.

Standard skills list shown from the slash icon in the chat input

You can create your own skill and add it to the list using the /skill-creator skill. While most of the standard skills can be customized, some skills are protected and customizing them is not supported. See Customize Tableau Agent.

Admin-defined skills

coming at GA

Admin-defined skills (Coming in 2026.3 release) let administrators define and prescribe skills or overrides at the site or tenant level, so an entire team or org shares the same customized behavior.

Local skills

Local skills live on your computer and apply to your agent sessions. Use them to add team or personal capabilities without changing the defaults for everyone. To author a new one or change the behavior of a standard one, see Customize Skills.

Plan mode

Use Plan mode for longer, reasoning-heavy, or token-intensive tasks.

  • Best for multi-step analysis and higher-ambiguity requests.
  • Encourages deliberate agent reasoning before action.
  • Useful when you expect iterative planning and refinement.

Auto-run mode

Use Auto-run mode when you want the agent to move through routine work with less back-and-forth.

  • The agent executes with fewer interruptions for routine flows.
  • Ideal when you want faster end-to-end execution.
  • Best paired with trusted project setup and clear prompts.

Use rewind

Rewind lets you move back in the chat to an earlier point. Use this when a prompt path goes off track or you want to compare alternate directions. It’s especially useful for exploratory analytics workflows.

  1. Select Rewind at the bottom of the Tableau Agent window.
  2. Drag and drop the dashed line that appears to the place in the chat you’d like to rewind to. The chat history below the line appears grayed out.

  3. Continue your chat and select Yes, rewind when prompted to undo changes.

    Note While rewind lets you return to a previous point in a chat with the agent, it does not undo any actions taken by the agent. In many cases explicitly asking the agent to revert changes will undo its actions.

Next steps