Configuration

Customizing Instructions

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Instructions are the Agent’s standing brief. They set the persona it adopts and the way it answers every prompt.

Purpose

Write the baseline instructions that govern an Agent’s voice, priorities, and boundaries, and optionally build them on top of instructions shared across your team.

Prerequisites

  • A configured Agent. See Quickstart.
  • Approved guidance on the Agent’s persona, audience, and tone.
  • Any boundaries the Agent must respect, such as topics to redirect or claims it must not make.

Where Instructions Live

Open your Agent and select the Behavior page. It holds six tabs:

TabWhat it controls
InstructionsThe baseline operating instructions covered in this guide
ModelThe AI model the Agent runs on
AbilitiesThe capabilities the Agent may draw on when answering
MemoryWhat the Agent retains across a conversation
HierarchyInheriting instructions from another Responder
AdvancedAdditional response tuning

The Behavior page edits the Agent’s default Responder, which is the AI configuration attached to the Agent. If your Agent has the Responders capability turned on, it can have several Responders with different instructions, and you edit each one from the Responder itself rather than from this page.

Steps

1

Open the Instructions Tab

Select Agents in the left-hand navigation, open your Agent, choose Behavior, then the Instructions tab. The large text area holds the instructions, prefilled with a working default so the Agent behaves sensibly before you change anything.

2

Write the Baseline Instructions

Replace or extend the default text. Cover the things the Agent cannot infer on its own:

  • Who it is and the role it takes on.
  • The audience it is speaking to.
  • Its tone and communication style.
  • What it should do when a question falls outside its purpose.
  • Anything it must never say or claim.

Write in plain prose. The Agent reads these instructions as guidance, so state the outcome you want rather than describing settings.

3

Give the Instructions a Visible Structure

The supplied default groups its guidance under headings such as identity, communication style, and behavioral requirements. Keeping that pattern is worth the effort on longer instructions: it makes conflicting guidance easier to spot, and it makes later edits easier to place.

4

Check For Instructions That Compete

Read the whole field once from the top before saving. Instructions that contradict each other produce inconsistent answers rather than an error, and a broad statement near the top can quietly undo a specific rule further down.

5

Inherit Shared Instructions (Optional)

Open the Hierarchy tab to build on instructions maintained elsewhere in your team:

  • Parent Responder prepends the selected Responder’s instructions to this one. Only Responders that have opted in appear in the list.
  • Allow Responder to be Extended opts this Responder in, letting other Responders in your team prepend its instructions to theirs.

Use this where several Agents share a common foundation, such as a house style or a set of doctrinal boundaries, so you maintain that text once.

6

Save And Test With Real Questions

Select Save Changes, then open the Agent’s live URL and ask the questions your audience actually asks, including one the Agent should decline or redirect. Adjust the instructions wherever the behavior is not what you intended.

Expected Result

The Agent answers in the intended voice, keeps to its stated purpose, and handles out-of-scope questions the way you described.

Managing Instructions In Git

Teams that keep prompt text under version control can enable Git Sync on the Instructions tab. When it is on, the instructions are managed by a file in a Git repository and the text area is locked in Console, with a Sync Now action to pull the current version. Leave it off to edit instructions directly in Console.

Troubleshooting

  • The instructions area is read-only. Either Git Sync is enabled, in which case edit the file in your repository, or instruction editing is not included in your team’s current plan.
  • The Behavior page is not available. The Agent has the Responders capability turned on, so instructions are edited on each Responder instead.
  • The Agent ignores a rule. Look for a broader instruction elsewhere in the field that contradicts it, and state the specific rule as an explicit exception.
  • The Agent’s answers changed unexpectedly. Check the Hierarchy tab. If a parent Responder is selected, its instructions are prepended to yours and edits there affect this Agent.

Next Step

Continue to Curating Sources.