Agents

Write the persona

Set the agent's identity, write the personality prompt that decides how it speaks, and give it a greeting, all saved as you type.

The Persona tab holds three things: who the agent is in your workspace, how it speaks, and the first line it says. It changes an agent's behaviour more than any other tab, because Personality is the one box the model reads word for word.

What you need

  • An agent that is not archived. Every field on this tab is disabled while the agent is archived, and a save on an archived agent is refused with This agent is archived. Restore it first to make changes.
  • Membership of the workspace the agent belongs to.

Steps

Step 1: Open the Persona tab

Open the agent, then select Persona in the tab row.

Step 2: Fill in the Identity block

Identity is the first section, described as Your agent's name and a short description. It holds two fields side by side.

Name is required. Its hint reads Your agent introduces itself with the name written in its Personality. If there is none, it uses this name. So this field is the fallback, not the name the caller hears first.

Description is optional. Its hint reads Shown in your agents list. The caller never hears it. It is for your colleagues, so use it to say what this agent is for.

Step 3: Write the Personality

Personality is the prompt, and it is required. An empty one shows the placeholder Required: add personality in red.

Write it as a brief for a new teammate. The portal's own suggestion says the same: Describe how this agent speaks and what information it knows. Write a short brief that helps a new teammate understand it. Name the agent inside this text if you want the caller to hear a particular name.

The box counts your characters against the limit underneath it and stops accepting input at the limit, so you cannot paste past it.

For what to put in the prompt, and two prompts carried end to end, see How the prompt is assembled.

Generate By AI, under the box, opens a dialog with a sample prompt in it. Your Personality text is unchanged when you close the dialog. Copy anything useful out of the sample and edit it in the box yourself.

Step 4: Write the greeting

Greeting message is the last section, described as The first line the agent says. Its placeholder is What it says when a conversation starts. It has its own character counter and its own limit.

Leaving it empty is allowed. The agents list shows No greeting set. for an agent without one.

Get it right

The caller hears the name written inside Personality. A prompt that never names the agent leaves the model to fall back to the Name field, and a prompt that describes the agent in the third person gives you an agent talking about itself.

Recommended

You are Sara, the support agent for Acme, an online electronics shop in Cairo.
Introduce yourself as Sara on the first turn.

Less effective

This agent helps Acme customers. It is friendly and professional.

Worked example

On a new support agent you set Name to Acme Support, leave Description as Front line for order and delivery questions, and write the Personality above. In Greeting message you put:

Acme support, Sara speaking. How can I help?

You type the last character and stop. No button, no toast: the tab has already saved. The next conversation opens with that greeting and the agent introduces itself as Sara.

What happens next

There is no save button. Every field on this tab saves itself about 0.6 seconds after you stop typing, and the save is silent. The only thing you will see is a red banner near the bottom of the screen if a save fails.

An empty Name never saves, since the field is required. Fix the name and the next keystroke saves the rest.

Changes reach the agent at the start of its next conversation. A call in progress finishes on the wording it started with.

Limits

Limit Value Applies to
Name 1 to 100 characters, required Name
Description 500 characters Description
Personality 1 to 8000 characters, required Personality
Greeting message 500 characters Greeting message
Autosave delay About 0.6 seconds after your last keystroke Every field on the tab

The character counters under the Personality and Greeting message boxes show the same limits the agents API enforces, so a value you can type is a value that will save.

Troubleshooting

Name is required.

The Name field is empty. The message appears under the field once you have touched it. Type a name.

Personality must be 8000 characters or fewer.

The prompt is over the limit. The box will not let you type past it, so this normally means the text arrived another way. Trim it.

Couldn't save changes. Try again.

The save failed for a reason the portal could not read. The tab reloads what is stored, so the text you see after the banner is the text that is saved, not your unsaved edit. Retype it and let it save again.

This agent is archived. Restore it first to make changes.

You are editing an archived agent. Use Restore in the header, then edit.

Some fields need attention.

The save was rejected on validation and the portal is showing the first reason it got back. Check the field lengths against the table above.

FAQ

Which name does the caller actually hear?

Whichever name is written inside the Personality text. The Name field is only the fallback for when the prompt names no one.

Does the caller ever hear the description?

No. It appears in your agents list and nowhere else.

Can I use Arabic in the prompt and the greeting?

Yes. Both boxes follow the direction of what you type, so Arabic and English both lay out correctly.

Do I need to press save?

No. There is no save button on this tab. Typing is saving.

Will an edit interrupt a call that is already running?

No. Edits take effect on the next conversation.

What does Generate By AI put in my prompt?

Nothing. It shows a sample prompt in a dialog and leaves Personality as you wrote it. Copy what you want from the sample into the box.