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Agent Prompt Guide
Learn how to effectively communicate with AI agents
Introduction
A prompt is the input or instruction you provide to an AI agent. The agent will respond based on:- its instructions (part of agent configuration by your Admins)
- its understanding of your prompt
Think of agents like your co-workers:
- They want to be helpful, but…
- They can’t read your mind and, most importantly…
- They tend to take things very literally
Important Terms
Prompt
Prompt
The message you (the user) send to the agent
Agent
Agent
An individual AI bot with a primary objective and access to tools to help it accomplish that objective
Tools
Tools
Agents can call tools to make API calls to other apps or systems (i.e. lookup information in a database or send an e-mail)
Tool Call
Tool Call
A single invocation of a tool, including parameters that are passed to that tool (i.e. for sending an email, the agent would choose the send_email tool and also send a parameter containing the email content)
Model
Model
The specific AI model that an agent uses (the model is like the agent’s brain), such as gpt-4 from OpenAI or Claude 3.5 Sonnet from Anthropic
Evals
Evals
Tests that are used to evaluate your agent, with an input prompt and an expected result
Embeddings
Embeddings
A mathematical representation of text as a series of numbers. Allows for computation such as “how similar is each chunk of text to my search term”
Tips for Writing Great Prompts
Provide Rich Context
The more context you can share, the better. The agent can only be as helpful as the instructions you give it.Example:
Instead of saying “Find information on software version upgrade”, say “I’m helping a customer upgrade their version of [software name] because they finally have internal bandwidth to do the upgrade. Help me share the right instructions and links with them to ensure their upgrade goes smoothly.”
Focus on Positive Instructions
Don’t tell AI what NOT to do. Instead, be specific and targeted with your instructions of what TO do.
Share Your Objective
Agents can make multiple tool calls and adjust based on findings, but they need to know your overall goal, not just the first step.
Explore Capabilities
If you’re not sure what your agent can do, just ask! The agent can summarize its tools and suggest productive ways to use them.
Additional Best Practices
Have a Conversation
Have a Conversation
If the agent doesn’t succeed at first, keep trying! Have a back and forth conversation and encourage the agent to try different approaches.
Use Markdown
Use Markdown
Agents are trained to understand Markdown formatting. Use it for structured content like lists and headers.
Ask for Citations
Ask for Citations
Ask the agent to explain its chain of thought and include specific citations when you want to understand its reasoning.