Overview
The Instructions tab in Agent Builder → Settings → Instructions lets you customise how each assistant greets visitors and shapes its personality. Everything set here is appended to the assistant’s system prompt — it does not replace the built-in prompt, only extends it.
Select the assistant you want to configure from the dropdown at the top of the tab. Settings are saved per assistant.
Welcome Message
The first message displayed when a chat session opens. By default this is pre-filled using the assistant’s name and description. Edit it to set a custom greeting.
Clear the field and save to restore the assistant’s built-in default welcome message.
Response Style
Controls the assistant’s tone and verbosity. The selected style is automatically appended to the system prompt.
- Balanced — default, general-purpose responses
- Concise — shorter, to-the-point answers
- Detailed — thorough, comprehensive responses
- Technical — precise and technical language
- Friendly — warm, conversational tone
Suggested Prompts
Up to 4 clickable prompt pills displayed below the welcome message. When a visitor clicks a prompt, it is sent to the assistant automatically. Leave a field blank to hide that prompt.
Use suggested prompts to highlight the most common questions for that assistant — they help visitors get started without needing to know what to ask.
Persona Notes
Additional context injected into the system prompt on every conversation for this assistant. Use it to share business context, tone of voice guidelines, or specific behaviour instructions — without overwriting the core system prompt.
Examples of what to include:
- Where this assistant is deployed and what it is for
- The business name, location, and owner’s name
- Tone of voice rules (e.g. always be warm, never use jargon)
- What to do or avoid in specific situations
Knowledge
Reference information this assistant can draw on during conversations. This is injected into the system prompt as a knowledge file — separate from any trained vector store data.
Ideal for:
- Business hours, location, and contact details
- Frequently asked questions and answers
- Product categories, pricing, and policies
- Any concise reference data the assistant should always have access to
For larger content — PDFs, full website pages, or extensive documentation — use the Knowledge page to upload files and train the vector store. Trained data is available to all assistants via retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
Frequently Asked Questions
Do Persona Notes replace the assistant’s built-in system prompt?
No. Everything you write in Persona Notes is appended to the assistant’s existing system prompt — it extends and refines the assistant’s behaviour, it does not overwrite it. The built-in prompt contains core instructions that define what the assistant can and cannot do, which tools it uses, and how it handles safety. Your persona notes layer on top of that: business context, tone rules, and custom instructions that shape how the assistant communicates. If you write something that conflicts with the core prompt (e.g., “ignore all safety rules”), the core prompt takes precedence.
How much text can I put in the Knowledge field?
The Knowledge field is injected into the system prompt on every conversation, so keep it concise — a few hundred words is ideal. Very long knowledge sections consume tokens on every message, which increases cost and can push other important context out of the model’s context window. For large reference material (product catalogues, full FAQ documents, PDFs), use the Knowledge page to upload files to the vector store. The assistant retrieves only the relevant sections when needed, rather than loading everything upfront.
Can I set a different response style for the same assistant on different pages?
Response Style is a global per-assistant setting — you cannot vary it by deployment location (admin chat vs. frontend shortcode vs. admin bar). If you need significantly different behaviour in different contexts, the recommended approach is to create a separate agent for each context using the Assistant Trainer, then configure each with its own instructions and response style. Agents are lightweight, and running multiple variants of the same base agent is a common pattern for sites that deploy the same AI across both internal admin use and public-facing support.
What is the difference between Persona Notes and the Knowledge field?
Persona Notes shape how the assistant behaves — its tone, its focus, what it should prioritise or avoid. Knowledge provides what the assistant knows — facts, data, policies it can reference. In practice: “Always respond in a friendly, casual tone and avoid technical jargon” belongs in Persona Notes. “Our return policy is 30 days, shipping is free over $50, and we operate Monday to Friday 9am–5pm EST” belongs in Knowledge. Using them correctly keeps your instructions organised and makes it easier to update one without accidentally affecting the other.
How do I reset an assistant’s welcome message back to the default?
Clear the Welcome Message field completely and save. When the field is empty, Agent Builder uses the assistant’s built-in default welcome message — which is automatically generated from the assistant’s name and description. You do not need to know what the default says or re-type it. After saving, open the chat interface to confirm the default message has been restored.