Astra Agents

What is this page about: Astra is Light's autonomous financial agent. It monitors your books, investigates issues, and reports findings without anyone prompting it. This page defines what Astra does on each run, the four analysis types and their cadence, how findings are delivered, how to configure Astra through Company Memory, and how to troubleshoot missing or excessive findings.

Astra is Light's autonomous financial operations agent. Astra works in the background, without anyone typing a prompt, monitoring your company's books, investigating issues, and reporting findings to the people you designate. Astra runs several types of scheduled analyses, each with a different scope and cadence, and remembers what it learns between runs.

Overview

Astra runs on its own schedule as a dedicated AI agent for your company, working in the background rather than through conversation. For a conversational assistant, use the Light Command Interface (LCI). On each run, Astra:

Reads your Company Memory, the plain-text instructions your admins have written for it, plus its own notes from previous runs
Checks for recent errors across your books, things like failed invoices, bills, card transactions, reimbursements, or batch operations, except during its nightly memory-consolidation run, which skips this check
Investigates using Light's internal tools, searching bills, invoices, expenses, journal entries, and more, before drawing any conclusions
Produces findings (issues worth your attention) and quiet notes it keeps for its own future reference
Delivers findings to the recipients named in Company Memory

Astra is enabled per company by Light. If Astra isn't active for your company, contact Light support.

The Analysis Types

Astra runs four types of analyses, each with its own scope and schedule:

Daily health check: Astra's core monitoring run.

Reviews recent activity and error states, investigates anything unusual, and reports material issues
Runs on an adaptive cadence, anywhere from about every 10 minutes to once a day, based on your company's transaction volume, open items, and upcoming deadlines

Weekly review: runs weekly.

Looks at the week's activity and compares it week-over-week
Cross-references recurring issues it has noticed before
Reports only significant patterns, not every minor blip

Monthly deep review: runs monthly.

Produces the monthly close memo, a structured record of the prior period for finance leaders
See Astra Monthly Review for what the memo covers

Memory consolidation: runs nightly.

Reviews what Astra has learned across prior runs and folds the durable takeaways into Company Memory so it can draw on them later
The only run type that updates Company Memory itself. The other three leave notes for it to build on
Notes that are no longer useful are cleared out over time
See Configuring Company Memory in Astra for details

Findings and Delivery

A finding is an issue Astra decides is worth your attention. Each finding Astra reports includes:

Severity: Info, Warning, or Critical
Category: for example payment, invoice, approval, or bank feed
Title and description: what Astra found, what it did, and what it recommends
Actions taken: anything Astra already executed, such as opening a support ticket with Light support
Entity references: links to the specific bills, invoices, expenses, card transactions, or other records Astra investigated

Astra delivers each finding as a direct message to the recipient named in Company Memory, sent over your company's connected Slack or Microsoft Teams channel. If Company Memory doesn't name a recipient, Astra records its findings but doesn't send messages.

Astra avoids repeating itself: a finding it already reported recently won't be re-sent unless something meaningful has changed. When an issue calls for it, Astra can also open a support ticket with Light support on your behalf and reference the ticket in its finding.

Configuring Astra

Company Memory is Astra's configuration surface: plain-text instructions your admins write that Astra treats as authoritative on every run. Use Company Memory to tell Astra who should receive findings, give it company-specific context, and define custom workflows. See Configuring Company Memory in Astra for details.

Good to know: Company Memory is distinct from Assistant Instructions, which guide how Light's AI parses specific document types (bills, contracts, intake documents, and reimbursements). Assistant Instructions don't affect Astra's monitoring runs.

Jobs

You can see every past Astra run in Settings (gear icon) → Jobs, a shared feed that also includes your other automated workflows, not just Astra. Each run is logged with its analysis type, start and completion time, result, findings count, and a summary, plus a full record of what Astra did and why.

Users with finance roles (such as company admin, controller, auditor, AP preparation, AR clerk, or invoice approver) can select Run Analysis from this page to trigger any of the four analysis types on demand, rather than waiting for the next scheduled run. This option only appears if Astra is enabled for your company and you have permission to view workflows.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Astra a chatbot I can talk to?

Astra runs on its own schedule as a background agent. For a conversational assistant, use LCI (Light Command Interface) instead.

What happens if Company Memory doesn't name a recipient?

Astra still runs its analyses and records any findings, but it doesn't send a message to anyone. Name a recipient in Company Memory, and make sure your company has a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel connected, to start receiving findings.

Can I change how often Astra checks my books?

The daily health check's cadence is adaptive and set by Astra itself, but you can influence it with a directive in Company Memory (for example, which issues matter most). Weekly and monthly runs are fixed-schedule and can't be moved.

Does Astra edit Company Memory on every run?

Only the nightly memory-consolidation run updates Company Memory. The daily, weekly, and monthly runs leave notes for that nightly run to build on later.

Will Astra send me the same finding over and over?

Astra re-sends a finding only when something meaningful has changed, so silence usually just means nothing new has come up.

Does Astra only report problems, or can it take action?

Both. Astra always investigates with real data before reporting, and a finding can include actions Astra already took, such as opening a support ticket with Light support.

Good to Know

Astra acts as its own agent identity: runs happen under Astra's own identity for your company, not any person's login.
Investigation before communication: Astra is instructed to always investigate with real data before reporting, and to include specific numbers and entity references in its findings.
Company Memory wins: instructions in Company Memory override Astra's default behaviour. If Astra is doing something you don't want, write a directive in Company Memory.
Bounded runs: each analysis has a limit on how much work it does in one run, after which Astra summarises what it found so far.

Troubleshooting

Not Receiving Astra Findings

Confirm Astra is enabled for your company (it's activated per company by Light).
Check that Company Memory names a recipient for findings. Without a named recipient, Astra logs findings but sends nothing.
Make sure your company has a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel connected, and that the named recipient is reachable on it. If not, delivery fails silently. The finding is still recorded, but no message goes out.
Astra re-sends a finding only when something has changed, so silence may just mean nothing new.

Astra Reports Too Often (or Not Often Enough)

The daily health check cadence is adaptive and set by Astra based on your company's activity. You can guide it with a directive in Company Memory (for example, which issues matter and which don't).
Weekly and monthly runs are fixed-schedule and can't be moved.

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# On this page

# Overview

# The Analysis Types

# Findings and Delivery

# Configuring Astra

# Jobs

# Frequently Asked Questions

# Good to Know

# Troubleshooting

# Not Receiving Astra Findings

# Astra Reports Too Often (or Not Often Enough)

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