Instructions & behavior

Instructions define how your assistant behaves and responds. They act as the system prompt (or persona) that the AI follows in every conversation—together with your knowledge base and the chosen tone.

Where to set instructions

When creating an assistant — In the flow, the step Define your assistant's personality (after name/model and knowledge base) is where you set the system prompt and instructions.
When editing an assistant — Open the assistant (View Assistant from the list), then edit the instructions/personality in the assistant detail or settings. Instructions are stored as the assistant’s prompt and can be updated anytime.

You can start from a template and then edit the text, or write fully custom instructions.

Templates

When defining personality, you can pick a template to pre-fill the instructions:

Base Instructions — General-purpose chatbot: helpful, friendly, efficient; asks clarifying questions and ends on a positive note.
General AI Agent — Helpful, accurate, polite; admits when it doesn’t know something and directs users to resources.
Customer Support Agent — Empathetic, patient, solution-focused; explains next steps when something can’t be resolved immediately.
Sales Agent — Enthusiastic but not pushy; focuses on needs, product details, and guiding through the process.
Custom Prompt — Empty template; you write the full instructions yourself.

After choosing a template, you can change the text in the instructions field. For Custom Prompt, you must provide your own instructions.

What to include in instructions

Instructions tell the AI:

Role — What the assistant is (e.g. customer support agent, sales assistant).
Behavior — How it should act (e.g. polite, concise, empathetic).
Boundaries — What it should or shouldn’t do (e.g. only answer from provided context, when to escalate or say “I don’t know”).
Style — Tone and format of replies (e.g. professional, short answers, use bullet points).

The AI also receives your knowledge base content and the last several turns of conversation history. It is instructed to answer using the provided context, cite sources when relevant, and keep the brand tone (e.g. Professional) you set for the assistant. If confidence is low or information is missing, it can use your configured fallback message.

Instructions vs description

Description — Short summary of the assistant (e.g. for the assistants list and for your team). It is not sent to the AI as part of the prompt.
Instructions (prompt) — The full system prompt that the AI uses to shape its replies. This is what you edit in the personality/instructions step or in the assistant’s prompt field.

Best practices

Be clear about the assistant’s role and main goal.
Define what to do when the answer isn’t in the context (e.g. say so and suggest contacting support).
Keep instructions focused; long, vague text can make behavior less consistent.
After changing instructions, save the assistant—changes take effect immediately for the widget and API.