What it says

The dashboard calls this the System prompt, under Agent Logic on the Configure page. It is the single biggest lever you have.

Plain language, written in Markdown, yours to edit, and saving it publishes to the live agent.

Where to find it

Dashboard → Agents → open the agent → Configure.

Set the purpose first

Above the prompt, under Profile, is Agent purpose. It is a dropdown, and it frames everything the agent does before your prompt says a word.

Pick the one that matches what you actually want from the call. An agent set to answer questions will not push for a booking, and one set to book will keep steering back to a time.

How to structure the prompt

A prompt written as one long paragraph is the most common reason an agent answers badly. The model reads headings, and it follows a structured prompt far more reliably than a wall of text.

Use these six headings, in this order. Write them as Markdown headings, because the prompt field is Markdown.

Guardrails carries the most weight. Put every hard rule under that one heading rather than scattering rules through the others. Anything you absolutely cannot have the agent say belongs there and nowhere else.

What the dashboard already handles

Four things are wired for you. Writing them into the prompt as well is wasted effort at best, and at worst it contradicts what the dashboard sends.

What is still worth writing under # Tools is the judgement, not the mechanics: when to transfer, when to book rather than take a message, what counts as urgent enough to interrupt. The dashboard gives the agent the ability. You tell it when to use it.

A template to start from

Copy this, replace the details with yours, and delete what does not apply.

# Personality
You are Sam, the receptionist for Bright Smile Dental, a family dental
practice in Leeds. You are warm, unhurried and efficient.

# Environment
You are on a phone call. The caller cannot see anything, may be driving,
and may be calling about something painful. They cannot re-read what you
said, so say it once and say it clearly.

# Tone
Keep answers to one or two sentences, then ask what else they need.
Use everyday words, not dental terms. Use contractions. Never read out a
list of more than three things.
Write numbers, prices and times as words: say "sixty pounds" and
"half past two", not "£60" and "14:30".

# Goal
1. Greet the caller and find out what they need.
2. If they want an appointment, offer the earliest two times that suit them
   and book it.
3. If they want a price, give the range and say what decides it.
4. Before ending, confirm their name and number, reading the number back
   one digit at a time.

# Guardrails
Never give clinical or medical advice. If asked, say a dentist will advise
at the appointment.
Never promise a specific dentist unless the caller asks for one by name and
that dentist is available.
Never quote a fixed price for treatment. Give the range only.
If you do not know something, say you do not know and offer to take a
message. Do not guess. This step is important.
Never repeat back card details or discuss payment over the phone.

# Tools
Booking is already wired up, so this block is only about when to use it.
Offer to book whenever the caller describes a problem that needs a visit.
If they only want a price, answer and do not push for a booking.
Transfer the call immediately if the caller says the word emergency, or
mentions bleeding that will not stop.

The rules that matter most

Five things carry most of the difference between a good agent and a poor one.

1. Cap the length. "Keep answers to one or two sentences" belongs in every prompt. Without it the agent delivers paragraphs, and paragraphs on a phone call are where callers hang up.
2. Tell it to admit what it does not know. An agent with no instruction here invents an answer, confidently. "If you do not know, say so and offer to take a message" is the single highest-value line you can write.
3. Spell out numbers and symbols as words. The agent speaks what it writes. £60 and 9-5 come out wrong; "sixty pounds" and "nine to five" come out right.
4. Put the hard rules under Guardrails. A rule buried in a paragraph about tone gets treated like a preference. Under Guardrails it gets treated like a rule.
5. Say what the caller's situation is. The Environment block sounds redundant and is not. An agent that knows the caller may be driving and cannot re-read anything behaves differently from one that does not.

Write for the ear, not the eye

This is the part that separates an agent that sounds right from one that sounds like a website being read aloud. Your prompt is followed by something that speaks, and speech has rules a page does not.

Five habits that do most of the work:

1. Say how long answers should be. "Answer in one or two sentences, then ask what else they need." Length is the single most common complaint, and one line fixes it.
2. Spell hard words phonetically. Your business name, a street, a treatment. Write Cholmondeley (say "Chumley") and it says it right.
3. Give it the exact words for the awkward moments. What to say when it does not know, when the caller is angry, when the price cannot be quoted. Left blank, it improvises.
4. Tell it to confirm anything it will act on. Numbers, dates, spellings. "Read the phone number back one digit at a time" prevents most bad callbacks.
5. Write one instruction per line. Long paragraphs bury the rule you cared about, in a prompt exactly as in an email.

Write a briefing, not a script

You are not writing the words it must say. You are telling it what it needs to know, the way you would brief a new receptionist on their first morning. It handles the phrasing.

Say what you do not do

An agent with no instruction about something will try to be helpful, and helpful invented answers cost you money.

We offer plumbing services in the local area.

We do domestic plumbing in Leeds and Bradford only. We do not do gas work,
commercial contracts, or emergency callouts after 8pm. We cannot give a fixed
price over the phone: every job is quoted after a visit, and the visit is free.

The second one stops a caller in Manchester being promised a visit, and stops the agent guessing a price.

Prices and promises

If prices vary, say that they vary and what decides them.

Handoff

You chose what happens when a call needs a person during setup. The options were:

Reinforce that choice here with the cases that matter:

If the caller says the word emergency, or mentions water coming through a
ceiling, transfer immediately without asking more questions.

Enhance with AI

There is an Enhance with AI button above the prompt. It rewrites what you have written into a fuller prompt. Read the result before you save it: it expands on your words, so anything you left vague it will fill in with a guess.

After you save

Saving publishes to the live agent, so the next call uses the new instructions. Make a test call and ask the exact question you were worried about. Two minutes, and it is the only way to know it took.

Next steps