How your agent's prompt gets built
The prompt is everything the AI reads before it replies. Part of it is your Instructions. The rest Voxido adds for you, fresh for every conversation. Knowing what Voxido adds helps you keep your Instructions short and focused on your business.
The short version
| You write | Voxido adds |
|---|---|
| Who the agent is, its job, its tone, its rules, your limits | The date, the customer's details, past memories, knowledge results, channel rules, the list of skills and templates, and safety checks |
So write only what Voxido can't know: your business.
What the agent reads on a call
In this order:
- Your Instructions. Variables such as
{{contact.name}}are filled in with the caller's details first. A variable that can't be filled is removed. - Date and time in your business's time zone: today, tomorrow, and the next seven days by name, with a rule never to ask the caller for today's date.
- The caller's details: name, phone, stage, saved fields, your team's latest call note, and what the agent remembers from earlier conversations.
- A rule to save details the caller shares, all at once, using Update contact information.
- Call rules: reply in one or two sentences, ask one question at a time, follow the caller's language, say business and product names in English, and admit when it doesn't know.
- Extra Hinglish rules when the agent uses a Sarvam speech model (see Voice).
- Knowledge rules, when the agent has Knowledge: answer facts from the knowledge base or your Instructions, search when needed, and treat rates as reference rates.
- Accuracy rules: keep dates and numbers exactly as the caller said them, check that an action worked before saying it did, and never read out internal IDs.
The Greeting is separate. It is spoken word for word when the call connects, before any of this.
What the agent reads on WhatsApp
- Your Instructions, plus the WhatsApp instructions from the WhatsApp section.
- A language rule. On WhatsApp the agent replies in English, even when the customer writes in another language.
- Date and time in your business's time zone.
- The contact's details, stage, saved fields, memories, recent history, and facts noted earlier in this chat.
- Knowledge results that match the customer's message.
- WhatsApp style rules:
*bold*with single asterisks, bullets for lists, 0–2 emoji (none on complaints or billing), check the knowledge base before quoting a price. - Your approved templates: a list of up to 40 approved templates the agent may send, with their first words and buttons.
Skills the agent can see
The agent can use the skills you switched on in Skills. Two memory skills are always added: one to note facts during a conversation and one to remember things for next time. If the agent is customer-facing, skills that read private data (email, calendar, sheets) are removed. See Skills.
The safety net after each reply
On WhatsApp and chat, Voxido checks each reply before it is sent. If the reply makes a promise, like "your refund is done" or "I've told the team", but no matching action happened in that turn, Voxido:
- replaces the reply with a safe, honest line,
- notifies your team so a person follows up, and
- records what happened in the conversation's AI trace.
Settings are frozen when a conversation starts
When a call connects or a chat starts, Voxido takes a copy of the agent's settings. The whole conversation uses that copy. If you save a change halfway through, it applies to the next conversation.
This stops an agent from changing its behaviour mid-sentence while someone else edits it.
What the AI never sees
| Setting | Who it's for |
|---|---|
| The agent's name at the top of the editor | Your team. The AI knows its name only from your Instructions or Persona name (Advanced → Voice). |
| About | Your team. |
| Tone chips (Warm, Concise…) | Your team. Write the tone in your Instructions. |
| Avatar, status | Your team and the app. |
Variables
| Where | How to write it | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Instructions | Double braces | {{contact.name}}, {{company.name}}, {{agent.persona_name}}, {{contact.your_field}} |
| Greeting | Single braces | {first_name}, {persona_name}, {time_of_day} ("Good morning") |
You rarely need variables in the Instructions. Voxido already gives the agent the contact's details. Use one when the exact value must appear in a sentence.
See what your agent saw
- For a real conversation: Sidebar → Inbox → Messages → open the conversation → ⋯ → AI trace. The AI conversation trace shows each turn: Input received, Context retrieved, LLM call, Guardrail, Outbound sent. You can also open it from a contact: ⋯ → AI conversation trace.
- Before a conversation: open the Copilot and ask, for example: "Show me the prompt Asha sees on WhatsApp." It shows a preview of the prompt.
Older agents
Agents made before the Instructions document existed were built from separate fields. Voxido shows them as one document in the editor. See Older agents: classic fields and Instructions.