monday.com’s AI toolkit has more than one way to make work easier, but Sidekick, AI Agents, and Vibe aren’t built to do the same thing.
One helps you understand your work and get things done faster, another can handle tasks within defined workflows, and the third lets you build custom apps by describing what you need.
Do you know what the tricky part is? It is knowing which one fits your team’s needs.
Should you think of using Sidekick for extra assistance, deploy AI Agents to handle more repetitive tasks, or need to rely on Vibe when your current setup isn’t working as intended? Choosing the right capability can help you avoid complexity and get even more value from monday AI.
In this guide, we will talk about monday Sidekick, Agents, and Vibe, explain what each one does best, and help you decide when to use each one.
If you’re trying to decide which monday.com AI capability your team needs, start with the outcome you want. Do you need help completing everyday tasks, AI that can execute processes automatically, or a custom app built around your workflow? Each capability actually serves a different purpose.
|
Feature |
monday Sidekick |
monday AI Agents |
monday Vibe |
|
What it does |
Assists with tasks through natural conversation |
Executes tasks based on instructions, context, and defined rules |
Builds custom apps from natural-language prompts |
|
Best for |
Getting answers, analyzing work, creating content, and updating boards |
Handling repeatable processes, making decisions, and taking action |
Creating tools and apps for specific business needs |
|
How you use it |
Ask Sidekick to help with a task |
Configure an Agent to act within defined permissions and workflows |
Describe the app you want, then refine the generated result |
|
Example |
Summarize project updates and identify delays |
Review incoming requests and route them to the right team |
Build a custom project intake app |
|
Think of it as |
Your AI work assistant |
Your AI task executor |
Your AI app builder |
The simplest way to remember the difference: Sidekick helps you get work done, Agents carry out tasks within defined boundaries, and Vibe helps you build the tools your team needs.
In the next sections, we’ll look at each capability individually, including what it can do, where it fits, and when it makes sense for your business.
Just think about the time your team spends searching through boards, catching up on project updates, drafting documents, and figuring out what needs attention next. monday Sidekick helps bring these tasks in one place, such that you can get work done without constantly switching between tools or using your workspace manually.
monday Sidekick is an AI-powered work assistant built directly into monday.com. It uses natural-language conversations and context from your work to help you find information, analyze data, create content, and take action across your workspace. It can also connect with supported apps and services, bringing more of your everyday work into the same experience.
Sidekick is not just about answering questions. The below mentioned is the list of areas you can use it for:
Just assume as if you are managing a marketing campaign with deadlines, content approvals, and many team members working on a monday.com board. So, instead of reviewing every item individually, you can even ask Sidekick:
“Summarize the campaign’s progress, find overdue tasks, and also highlight anything that could result in delaying the launch.”
Sidekick can use the available workspace context to summarize progress and also find issues. You can then ask it to draft follow-up messages or update supported items, reviewing important actions before they are carried out.
This makes Sidekick especially useful when your team needs quick answers, contextual assistance, and helps move everyday work forward without adding another tool to its routine. Always review its outputs, particularly when decisions or important changes depend on them.
If you use Sidekick for routine assistance, it can help you save time, but you must also know that it can consume your team’s credit usage. Under monday.com’s AI 2026 pricing model, Sidekick quickly consumes credits for each message, and the amount is fully dependent on the complexity of the request, the context it needs to process, and also the tools it uses.
Have a look at its estimated credit consumption.
|
Task Complexity |
Approximate Credits Per Message |
|
Simple |
10-30 credits |
|
Intermediate |
30-80 credits |
|
Complex |
80-150 credits |
|
Extra complex |
150+ credits |
Imagine your team starts each morning reviewing new requests, checking task statuses, assigning work, and following up on anything that has stalled. Now, what if you were being told that some of those tasks could be handled automatically?
That is where monday AI Agents step in!
monday AI Agents are AI-powered assistants that monitor work, interpret information, make decisions based on your instructions, and also execute tasks within predefined permissions. These can evaluate context and determine an appropriate next action.
Depending on how an Agent is set up with the number of permissions and tools available, it can help your team with tasks. Those are:
Consider a sales team receiving dozens of new leads every day. Each lead needs to be reviewed, checked against qualification criteria, assigned to a salesperson, and then followed up with at the right time.
A monday AI Agent could be configured to review lead information, assess it against your team’s criteria, update fields, and route the lead to the right owner. It could even prepare follow-up tasks based on the process you have already defined.
Automation can save time, but it is even more important to understand how it affects your AI credits. AI Agents consume credits based on the complexity and also depth of tasks they perform.
The below mentioned is the approximate credit consumption for different levels of Agent tasks:
|
Task Complexity |
Approximate AI Credits |
|
Simple |
10-50 credits |
|
Intermediate |
50-150 credits |
|
Complex |
150-250 credits |
|
Extra complex |
~250+ credits |
monday Vibe is an AI-powered app builder that lets you create custom work apps by describing what you need in natural language. It turns your prompts into apps, dashboards, widgets, and tools that work within the monday.com environment, helping teams create solutions around their processes.
Vibe turns out to be helpful when monday.com features don’t fully address a team’s requirements. For example, you can use it to build:
Suppose your HR team manages employee leave requests through multiple boards, forms, and spreadsheets. Managers need to check upcoming absences; employees want to see their leave status, and HR needs a clear view of scheduling conflicts.
monday Vibe makes it even simpler to develop a leave-tracking app that shows the number of upcoming absences, shows remaining leave balances, and alerts team members about the incoming projects. Vibe can also generate an app based on your requirements, which you can refine with more prompts.
Vibe has quite a different credit-consumption pattern from Sidekick and AI Agents as it can involve building an app, publishing it, and also running AI features within the published app.
|
Activity |
How It Affects Cost |
|
Building & Editing |
Each prompt consumes credits based on the selected model and the complexity of the request. |
|
Publishing An App |
Publishing a live app requires a paid Vibe app package. |
|
Running AI Features |
AI-powered interactions inside a published app consume credits according to the applicable usage and model rules. |
For building and editing, monday.com currently lists these approximate credit costs per prompt:
|
AI Model |
Approximate Credits Per Message |
Best Suited For |
|
Gemini Flash |
10-20 |
Simple changes and quick edits |
|
Claude Sonnet |
30-50 |
Most app builds and everyday refinements |
|
Claude Opus |
50-500 |
Complex apps and deeper troubleshooting |
|
Vibe Auto-Select |
Varies |
Letting monday.com choose a model for the task |
Sidekick, Agents, and Vibe can all help your team work more efficiently, but choosing between them isn’t simply a matter of picking up the most advanced AI tool. The right option depends on what you want to accomplish, how much work you want AI to handle, and whether you need assistance, automation, or a custom application.
Here is how they compare across the factors that basically matter most to businesses.
The biggest difference is the job each capability is designed to do.
Another important difference is how each capability runs.
This distinction matters when deciding where human involvement is most valuable. Sidekick can be used to support employees, Agents to reduce manual tasks in defined processes, and Vibe to create a suitable interface or a custom app for a workflow.
|
Business need |
Best fit |
Example |
|
Find information quickly |
Sidekick |
Summarize project updates before a meeting |
|
Understand work and find issues |
Sidekick |
Show overdue tasks across a board |
|
Handle repetitive & context-dependent tasks |
AI Agents |
Review requests and route them to the right owner |
|
Coordinate multi-step processes |
AI Agents |
Process incoming requests and trigger appropriate follow-up actions |
|
Build a custom internal tool |
Vibe |
Create a resource planning app |
|
Design an app around a unique workflow |
Vibe |
Build a custom project intake experience |
To use these monday AI features effectively, you need to match the capability to the problem. The reason being is that a custom app won’t automatically solve a process that needs better automation, and an Agent may not be needed for a simple question that Sidekick can easily answer.
The effort required depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
For business teams, the real work isn’t only about enabling an AI feature. It is also about defining the process properly, preparing the data, checking on the permissions, and ensuring the result fits how employees work.
All three AI capabilities can have different implications for your AI budget under monday.com’s credit-based model, but their consumption patterns aren’t identical.
|
Capability |
What influences credit consumption |
What to monitor |
|
Sidekick |
Request complexity, context, and tools used |
Frequency of interactions and credits per task |
|
AI Agents |
Task complexity, depth, and actions performed |
Credits per run and recurring activity |
|
Vibe |
Selected model, prompt complexity, and AI-powered app usage |
Credits used during development and after launch, plus applicable app-publishing costs |
For Sidekick and Agents, more involved tasks can consume more credits than simple requests. Vibe requires an additional distinction, that is, building or editing an app can consume credits, while publishing and operating it may involve separate package and AI-usage considerations.
Under the new credit-based model, monday.com lists a credit price of $0.01 USD per credit, although the applicable pricing and allocations depend on your account’s terms. You must even review the current credit documentation and your account’s AI Governance dashboard before you actually estimate total costs. And, you must know that not every monday.com AI feature consumes AI credits.
There isn’t one universal winner. Its value relies on the time saved, the problem solved, and also the continuous effort needed to maintain the solution.
Before adopting any of them, find the problem you want to solve and establish how you will measure success. For example, you could track time spent on administrative work, turnaround time for the requests, or the number of manual steps cut down.
Ultimately, the best monday.com AI capability is the one that addresses a need without adding on unnecessary cost or complexity.
Knowing the difference between Sidekick, Agents, and Vibe is one thing. Deciding which one your team should actually use is another.
The right choice depends on where your team loses the most time, whether the work requires human judgment, and if your existing monday.com setup already supports the process. Here’s a practical way to decide.
If your employees spend too much time searching for information, reviewing updates, preparing summaries, or even working through routine tasks, Sidekick is a sensible starting point.
It helps people interact with their work through natural-language requests, and makes information easier to access and everyday tasks easier to manage.
If work regularly gets held up by manual reviews, task routing, follow-ups, or decisions based on incoming information, AI Agents may then be a better fit for you.
Agents can easily handle actions within predefined workflows, which can then cut down on manual oversight at every step. For that, they also need proper instructions, permissions, and even monitoring such that they actually perform as intended.
Sometimes the issue isn’t the amount of manual work or the need for an AI assistant. It is that your existing tools don’t support the workflow your team needs.
Vibe is worth considering when you want to build a custom app around a particular process, interface, or business requirement.
The End Note
Most businesses don’t need to use every AI feature available to them. They need to identify where work gets stuck and choose the right capability to fix it.
monday Sidekick helps teams make sense of information and move through everyday tasks faster. AI Agents can take on repeatable tasks, whereas Vibe helps build custom apps when existing tools don’t work as intended.
The real value comes from making these capabilities work within your existing processes. When implemented with proper analysis, monday AI can reduce manual effort, improve visibility, and even help teams spend more time on work that moves the business forward.
Not sure which monday.com AI capability is right for your team? Talk to our monday.com experts now!
monday Sidekick is basically an AI assistant that can help you find information, analyze work, create content, and execute actions. AI Agents can execute configured tasks and workflows based on instructions, triggers, and permissions. Lastly, monday Vibe is an AI-powered app builder that helps build custom business apps.
No, not at all! Sidekick is for interactive, on-demand assistance: you ask it to complete a task, analyze information, or act. AI Agents can be configured to execute tasks in response to triggers or schedules, allowing them to operate with less ongoing input from users.
Well, not really! Traditional monday.com automations follow defined rules, which includes notifying an owner when a status changes. AI Agents can understand context, evaluate information, and choose actions within the permissions you have configured.
No! monday Vibe lets you describe the application you want in natural language, then generate and refine it without writing code from scratch. You can use it to create tools such as custom dashboards, internal portals, resource planners, forms, and data visualizations.
monday Vibe can help you create custom business apps, dashboards, internal tools, custom forms, resource planners, and data visualizations based on your requirements.
Yes! monday.com uses a credit-based model for supported AI capabilities, but its consumption totally depends on feature and task complexity. Sidekick usage depends on the complexity of each interaction, while Agent usage varies by task. Vibe can consume credits when building an app and when AI-powered functionality runs inside a published app.
Connect quotes and payments directly to CRM data, reducing sales-finance reconciliation while