Ready to turn ideas into working agents? This guide walks you through a clear, reproducible process—from defining the mission to launching a reliable, brand‑aligned assistant.
Foundation and goals
- Purpose: Define one crisp outcome your agent delivers.
- Audience: Identify who it serves (e.g., sales reps, wellness clients, creators).
- Constraints: Set boundaries (what it must and must not do).
- Success metrics: Choose measurable outcomes (response accuracy, conversion rate, engagement).
Tip: Write a one‑sentence mission like “Asabe helps sales teams turn outreach into booked meetings with empathetic, actionable coaching.”
Step‑by‑step build
- Design the agent role and behavior
- Mission statement: What the agent does, why it matters.
- Persona and tone: Friendly, professional, concise, or motivational.
- Capabilities: Core functions (e.g., lead qualification, content creation, wellness check‑ins).
- Boundaries: Topics to avoid and escalation rules for sensitive scenarios.
- Define inputs and outputs (schema)
- Input fields: User role, intent, context, files/URLs, preferences.
- Validation: Required vs optional, format checks, safe content screening.
- Outputs: Structured responses, summaries, action steps, files or links.
- Metadata: Confidence scores, timestamps, tags for analytics.
- Create instruction prompts
- System prompt: Agent identity, mission, tone, do/don’t lists.
- Role prompts: Branching instructions per user type (employee, employer, creator).
- Tool prompts: How to format requests for downstream components (e.g., video generator).
- Fallbacks: Graceful handling when context is missing—ask for exactly what’s needed.
- Reference knowledge base
- Curate sources: Policies, templates, brand voice guides, FAQs.
- Tag content: Topic, role, region, date, reliability.
- Update cadence: Review cycle to keep facts and messaging current.
- Access rules: What the agent can cite vs summarize.
- Workflow orchestration
- Sequence: Intake → validate → plan → execute → summarize → next steps.
- Branching: Different flows for short tasks vs multi‑step projects.
- State tracking: Remember user preferences within a session (opt‑in).
- Escalation: Hand off to humans for edge cases or high‑risk scenarios.
- Safety and compliance
- Content filters: Sensitive topics, copyrighted media, platform rules.
- Consent and privacy: Clear user prompts and opt‑in for data use.
- Rate limits: Prevent spammy behavior and ensure quality.
- Audit trail: Log decisions and sources for transparency.
- Testing and validation
- Scenario tests: Realistic inputs across roles and difficulty levels.
- Golden samples: Known‑good outputs for regression checks.
- A/B prompts: Compare variations for clarity and performance.
- Metrics: Accuracy, helpfulness, time to value, user satisfaction.
- Launch and iterate
- Onboarding: Short guide, examples, and quick‑start templates.
- Feedback loop: In‑flow thumbs up/down with comments.
- Analytics: Track usage, failures, and improvement areas.
- Versioning: Label updates and changelogs for reproducibility.
Example: Asabe (sales/employees/employer coach)
- Mission: Provide role‑aware coaching that turns workplace challenges into clear next steps.
- Inputs: Role, goal, context (e.g., email thread), constraints (timeline, tone).
- Outputs: Action plan with scripts, objection handling, and follow‑up schedule.
- Workflow: Intake → clarify → recommend → draft messages → schedule → reflect.
- Safety: Avoid personal medical advice; escalate severe workplace conflicts to HR contact.
Best practices
- Start narrow: Ship a focused MVP that does one job exceptionally well.
- Make it measurable: Tie outputs to metrics (e.g., booked calls, engagement lift).
- Write for reuse: Use templates and modular prompts to scale features.
- Respect the brand: Keep language, inclusivity, and visual style consistent.
- Document everything: Schemas, prompts, test cases, and decision logs.
Quick start checklist
- Mission defined: One sentence value proposition.
- Schemas ready: Inputs/outputs with validation.
- Core prompts: System + role‑specific + fallbacks.
- KB curated: Tagged references aligned with your brand.
- Workflow mapped: Clear stages and handoffs.
- Safety set: Filters, consent, escalation paths.
- Tests built: Scenarios, golden samples, metrics dashboard.