Designing the agent prompt
Who this is for: whoever manages the account.
What it is for
The prompt is the agent's "brain": it defines who it is, what it knows and how it behaves. TalkAI gives you a section-based builder so you do not have to write everything from scratch.
Templates to get started
When you create an agent manually you can start from a template in the library, from a recipe in the gallery by industry, or from a blank prompt. See Templates and gallery by industry.
The prompt sections
Instead of a single block of text, the prompt is built from sections:
| Section | What to put |
|---|---|
| Role and identity | Who the agent is and who it represents (e.g. "You are the TalkAI sales assistant") |
| Specialty | What it focuses on and what it can do |
| Rules | What it must and must not do (limits, policies, what not to invent) |
| Transfer | When to hand off to a person or another agent |
| Tone and style | How it speaks: formal or informal, long or short, with or without emojis |
| Closing rules | When to consider the conversation finished (see Closing rules) |
Sections are joined in that order, each with its title, and the result is the final prompt the model reads.
Where each thing goes
The most common doubt is which section to use for something specific:
| If you want to tell it... | Goes in |
|---|---|
| who it is and who it represents | Role and identity |
| which topics it handles | Specialty |
| a step-by-step procedure | Rules |
| what to do depending on what a tool returns | Rules |
| examples of solved cases | Rules, at the end |
| which data it must not invent | Rules |
| when to pass the conversation to someone else | Transfer |
| whether to use a formal or informal address | Tone and style |
Almost everything that sounds like "how it works" goes in Rules. Specialty is which topics, not how.
The first line matters
If the agent is transactional, the first line of its prompt is what other agents see in their catalog to decide whether to consult it. If it does not clearly say what it can do, nobody will call it even if its tools are well configured. Start Role and identity with its function in one sentence.
Examples: what works best
For tasks where the agent must extract data (read an invoice, a form), one solved example teaches more than five rules. The trick is to show the correct data next to the one that causes confusion:
The invoice says:
DATE 18/08/2026
Start of activities: 24/08/2001
The issue date is 18/08/2026.
24/08/2001 is the issuer's start of activities and is NOT used.
Advanced mode
If you prefer writing the prompt as free text, turn on advanced mode and edit everything in a single field.