Discover Headless Conversations
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain what “headless” means in the context of the Salesforce Platform.
- Identify use cases for interacting with Salesforce headlessly.
- Describe which tools users can use to build headlessly on the Salesforce Platform (for example, Claude Code, CodeEx, Windsurf, Cursor, Gemini CLI, or our builder in this unit!).
Beta
You’re entering into the great experiment with us. This badge features a beta version of the Trailhead headless builder experience, which means your experience might vary from time to time.
Before You Start
We know you’re eager to learn more about Salesforce Headless 360. But, before you start this badge, make sure you complete Introduction to Salesforce Headless 360. What you learn in this badge builds on the concepts and terminology covered in the Quick Look.
One Platform Anywhere You and Agents Work
Welcome to Salesforce Headless 360, the platform that makes it possible for humans and agents to work together across any surface (Slack, Teams, ChatGPT), tool, or environment. Built on an open ecosystem, it gives developers the freedom to build on Salesforce and share what they create.
Salesforce Headless 360 means the business logic, data, workflows, permissions, and governance that live inside Salesforce are now accessible from anywhere without requiring anyone to open your Salesforce org. Critically, agents don’t just get access to the data, they inherit security and governance. Every permission, every compliance rule, every approval chain your customers have spent years building travels with the platform, wherever it’s accessed.
In simple terms: Headless 360 allows Salesforce to meet you and agents where you already are instead of asking you to come to Salesforce. You don’t have to change how you work. Salesforce shows up in the tools and surfaces you already use every day.
What Does “Headless” Mean?
Why is it called headless? The term comes from the technical world. In that world, headless is a system that separates the backend logic, or body, from the frontend presentation layer, or head. So, Salesforce Headless 360 is just the ability to use all that Salesforce has to offer without having to directly log in to the Salesforce org. If you’re a developer, you can interact with the Salesforce backend, body, using the tools you’re already using. Everyone else can interact with Salesforce in the surfaces they usually work in, like Slack, Teams, ChatGPT, and others.
Since the beginning, using Salesforce meant logging in and working inside Salesforce. A customer service rep opened a console, clicked into a case, and manually updated its status—a human, navigating a platform, to get work done. But in the agentic enterprise, humans aren’t the only ones doing the navigating. Agents are too, and they don’t go to a browser or click through UIs. They call application programming interfaces (APIs), Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, and run command line interface (CLI) commands directly.
Now Salesforce is built for agents too. The platform is now exposed to agents with trusted context to be programmable and accessible from anywhere. AI agents route requests, summarize information, and take action across every system, all at once. This is the shift to the agentic enterprise—where agents span every system and workflow, work moves autonomously, and customer needs are anticipated before anyone even picks up the phone.
The result is Salesforce Headless 360: the capabilities your agents need most, exposed as an API, MCP tool, or CLI command so humans and agents can build, act, and deliver experiences on any surface. This extends across the full breadth of what Salesforce has built, from the processes that resolve customer support cases to the workflows that help sales teams close deals.
Both humans and agents need the same thing: the data, the workflows, the trust layer. The surface changes. The platform doesn’t.
The Salesforce platform powers how humans and agents work together. Whether they’re using Customer 360 apps, Slack, Headless 360, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, ChatGPT, or other surfaces, Salesforce can now surface data, trigger workflows, and take action in those environments directly. Agents now orchestrate your apps, your workflows, your business logic, and they inherit all of it without having to rebuild any of it.
Adding Flexibility, Speed, and Scalability
Headless 360 isn’t about replacing what already exists. The Salesforce user interface (UI) isn’t going away. You can keep using Salesforce as it is. This is about adding flexibility, speed, and scalability, not removing anything. Headless 360 is designed to complement existing Lightning components, not replace them.
Think of it this way: If your team lives in Slack, your agents can surface Salesforce data directly in Slack. If developers prefer Cursor or Claude Code, they can now build Salesforce-powered experiences right from those tools. And if a business user needs a custom portal, it can now be powered by Salesforce under the hood in any UI framework they choose. More surfaces. More flexibility. Same trusted platform, governance, and business logic underneath, accessible from anywhere.
Headless 360 drives four core value pillars.
- Adoption: Many organizations struggle to get users to log in to Salesforce consistently. Bringing workflows directly to where users already live removes that friction entirely.
- Reach: Employees who never traditionally had Salesforce access, such as frontline workers, field teams, or external partners, can now participate in Salesforce-powered workflows through Slack or Teams.
- Speed: Eliminating the need for constant app switching genuinely improves daily productivity.
- AI agent strategy: Enterprises building agentic AI need their agents to act reliably with access to real business data, governed workflows, and accountability. Headless 360 gives agents the enterprise infrastructure they need to move from pilot to production.
Introduction to Headless 360
Headless 360 opens the door for developers and users.
The learning curve for developers to move into the Salesforce ecosystem can be steep. If you’re a developer using Claude Code, Cursor, or Windsurf, you can now connect to Salesforce APIs and MCP servers natively without having to learn a new integrated development environment (IDE) or platform from scratch. With 30+ prebuilt coding skills, 60+ MCP tools available today, and more coming, you can build, test, and deploy Salesforce-powered agents and apps using the tools you already love. You inherit Salesforce security, permissions, and workflows automatically, no brittle DIY integrations required.
Headless 360 also unlocks new ways for anyone to interact with Salesforce. Whether you’re in Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, or ChatGPT, Salesforce can now surface data, trigger workflows, and take action in those environments directly. It’s a seamless experience. You get the power of the Salesforce Platform without ever needing to open the Salesforce UI.
AI agents that create code are called coding agents. OK, that makes sense—but what does that mean for you? The coding agents use Headless 360 to build Salesforce interactions and automations. It means you can use a coding agent to write Salesforce code for you, and you can interact with the coding agents by using regular, everyday, conversational language. You do this in the next unit.
Salesforce Headless 360 delivers three new innovations.
- New MCP tools and coding skills that give your coding agent full access to your platform
- A new experience layer that renders rich, native interactions across every surface, from Slack to Voice to WhatsApp
- New tools that give you control over how agents behave in production, before launch and after
But just using coding agents to get intelligent inference from LLMs isn’t enough. Coding agents need context, workflows, trust, and the right engagement layer to actually do anything.
A coding agent connected to a raw database doesn’t know that a customer has an open escalation, a renewal due in 30 days, a breached support SLA, and a relationship owner with a personal connection to their CFO. That context took years to accumulate. It lives in Salesforce. And now, Data 360 exposes it as an API, an MCP tool, and a CLI command, so your coding agent can reach it from anywhere, without touching a UI. That’s what separates a coding agent that writes code from one that understands your business.
On top of all of that, agents inherit security and governance. All the permissions, compliance rules, and approval chains you spent years building go wherever the platform is accessed.
In the next unit, you work with a specific use case of building headlessly. It’s just a quick example of what you can do with Headless 360. Just keep in mind there are many things you can build using Headless 360 that go beyond this use case. To get hands-on with Headless 360, you need a custom playground—go ahead and get that now.
Sign Up for a Custom Playground with Agentforce
To complete this badge, you need a custom playground that contains Agentforce.
- Click Create Playground.
- Your new org is automatically attached to your Trailhead account.
Make note of your org’s expiration date and complete this badge before then.
Now that you have your org ready to go, you’re all set for the next unit. You get to use the Trailhead headless IDE that allows you to use a conversation with an agent to build an agent. Let’s go!