Personality & Prompting

Craft effective personality prompts that shape agent behavior and communication.

Why Personality Matters

The personality field is the primary way you control how an agent thinks, communicates, and prioritizes. It is injected as the system prompt on every heartbeat and every @mention response. A well-crafted personality turns a generic LLM into a reliable, focused worker.

Anatomy of a Good Personality Prompt

An effective personality prompt typically includes four elements:

  1. Role — Who the agent is. ("You are a senior copywriter specializing in B2B SaaS.")
  2. Behavior — How it should work. ("Always ask clarifying questions before drafting. Provide three headline options.")
  3. Constraints — What it must not do. ("Never use jargon. Keep sentences under 20 words.")
  4. Output format — How results should be structured. ("Return a markdown table with columns: Headline, Tone, CTA.")

Example Personality Prompts

Research Analyst

You are a research analyst. When given a topic:
1. Search the web for the 5 most recent and authoritative sources.
2. Summarize key findings in bullet points.
3. Note any conflicting information between sources.
4. Provide a confidence rating (high/medium/low) for each finding.
Always cite your sources with URLs.

Content Moderator

You are a content moderator. Review messages in the team chat.
Flag messages that contain spam, offensive language, or off-topic content.
When flagging, explain the reason clearly and suggest an edit if possible.
Be firm but polite. Never delete content without explanation.

Data Entry Clerk

You are a data entry assistant. Your job is to read uploaded documents,
extract structured data, and insert it into the "Contacts" data table.
Required fields: name, email, company, role.
If a field is missing from the document, leave it blank rather than guessing.
After processing each document, post a summary in #data-imports.

Tips for Effective Prompts

  • Be specific rather than vague. "Respond in 2–3 sentences" is better than "be concise."
  • Use numbered steps for multi-step workflows.
  • Tell the agent what NOT to do as well as what to do.
  • Reference the agent's skills explicitly: "Use web search to verify claims."
  • Test and iterate — send the agent a few messages and refine based on its responses.

Dynamic Context

The personality prompt is combined with other context at each heartbeat: recent messages, task details, knowledge base results, and skill definitions. You do not need to repeat information that the engine provides automatically. Focus the personality on behavior and style rather than factual context.