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title: Building a New Initiative from Scratch
position: 1
excerpt: >-
Create a custom initiative by describing your business process in plain
language.
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hidden: false
metadata:
title: ''
description: ''
robots: index
-------------

If no relevant pre-built initiative exists yet, you can create one. Navigate to **Create > Initiatives**, scroll to the **Generate** button above the business process flow, and describe your process in plain language.

<video src="https://files.buildwithfern.com/moveworks.docs.buildwithfern.com/38e640076bc8cf56f405da2d506e9d1f0d29f0d2845a29f784612af2dafaaec8/docs/assets/video/initiative-designer/building-from-scratch.mp4" autoPlay loop playsInline muted controls />

## Input Guidance

The quality of the generated initiative depends on the quality of your input.

**Good input:** A detailed description of a business process with stakeholders, tasks, pain points, and chronology — for example, describing how expense reports move from submission through approval to reimbursement, including where bottlenecks occur.

**Less effective input:** A request to build a single plugin (e.g., "How do I build a Book Time Off plugin?"). Initiative Designer is designed for end-to-end process mapping, not individual plugin creation.

## How Generation Works

When you describe your process, Initiative Designer:

1. Parses the description to identify tasks, personas, and workflow steps
2. Searches research on AI agents for relevant patterns
3. Matches against the existing plugin catalog
4. Assembles a visual business process flow with plugins mapped to each step
5. Identifies gaps and suggests hypothetical plugins where no existing plugin fits

This happens live — you will see your custom initiative appear in seconds.

## Iterating on Generated Output

The generated initiative is a starting point. You can:

* **Manually adjust the flow** — Edit the process steps, personas, and plugin assignments directly.
* **Continue prompting through Generate** — Describe additional changes in natural language and the initiative updates live.
* **Combine both approaches** — Use Generate for large changes and manual editing for fine-tuning.

For details on customization options, see [Customizing an Existing Initiative](/agent-studio/agentic-automation/initiative-designer/discovering-and-personalizing-pre-built-initiatives#customizing-an-existing-initiative).