How to Build an AI Agent

🚧 IMPORTANT: This Tutorial is currently in development

🚨 Have additional questions? Please open a ticket or ask on our Discord.

1. Create your Base System Prompt

The base system prompt is the foundation of an AI agent, defining its behavior and capabilities. To create an effective prompt:

  1. IMPORTANT: Start with the default prompt provided by Stammer (see below)

  2. Make small, incremental changes to fine-tune the agent's performance.

  3. Use clear, specific language to convey instructions and guidelines.

  4. Provide examples to illustrate expectations and context.

Investing time in crafting a well-structured prompt is crucial for building a reliable AI assistant that aligns with your goals.

The Stammer Default AI Agent Prompt:

// This is a comment and will not be read by ChatGPT.
// You may replace the following content with your own company information or 
// explore the marketplace for a variety of bots featuring Ready-to-Go Base System Prompts.

// Replace this with your company name and prefered agent name
You are a helpful assistant for Amazing Company named Stam.

// The knowledge base instructions are sent by us to the agent in a hidden prompt
Your job is answer questions customers send to you. To do that you have been given instructions on how to access the knowledge-base.

// This helps prevent hallucinations.
If you do not have answer to a question and it in the knowledge-base then let the user know that you do not have the answer to the question. You can say something like, "Hum, I am not sure."

// This keeps answers short and you can adjust this as needed
Keep your answers as concise as possible while still giving the required information.

Do not break character.

// This avoids it from answering random questions
Avoid answering questions that are not at all relevant to the business.

Choosing the right model for your AI use case is crucial:

  1. GPT-4o: Recommended for most use cases, especially complex tasks like lead generation and scheduling. It's more intelligent and follows instructions better than GPT-4 and GPT-3.5.

  2. GPT-3.5: Suitable for simpler chatbots that answer questions based on uploaded knowledge base data.

To make the best decision, start with GPT-4 Turbo, complete this tutorial to get things working. Then, temporarily switch to GPT-3.5 to see if it meets your needs.

Write your prompt in English and then ask the Agent to translate

For optimal AI model performance, it's best to provide instructions in English. This is because the models, developed by companies and trained on data primarily written in English, have the strongest comprehension of this language.

To cater to non-English speaking end-users, we highly recommend:

  1. Write your base system prompt in English.

  2. Add specific terminology to instruct the AI to translate its responses as needed.

This approach ensures that the AI model accurately understands your instructions while still being able to communicate effectively with your target audience.

// Add this to your base system prompt somewhere
Users will speak to you in {INSERT_YOUR_LANGUAGE_HERE} so be sure to reply to them in that same language
// Or add this if you want to support all languages
Response to users in the language they response to you in. 

Using Markdown can be helpful to better structure your prompt to provide additional context but this is OPTIONAL

Using markdown formatting can be incredibly helpful when creating complex prompts. Markdown provides additional context to the AI models and structures the prompt in a way that is easier for humans to read and understand.

However, it's important to note that using markdown is completely optional. In fact, the default base system prompt used by Stammer AI does not include markdown formatting to keep things simple and avoid confusion for users.

If you're interested in using markdown to format your prompts, refer to the concise tutorial provided below.

# Markdown Tutorial

## Headers
# H1
## H2
### H3

## Emphasis
*Italic*
**Bold**
***Bold Italic***

## Lists
- Item 1
- Item 2
 - Subitem 1
 - Subitem 2

2. Connect Your Data Sources

Upload data to the AI agent's knowledge base.

📚Knowledge Base Explained

3. Get the AI Agent Answering Questions accurately FIRST

  1. Connect your Data Sources

    1. Remember, you must get clean data into the bot

  2. Get the A.I. Agent Answering Questions Accurately FIRST

    1. Use Debug Mode if anything is not answering properly

      1. If the bot is not answering correctly then you need to:

        1. Get better data into the bot

        2. Add the question to your data with the appropriate answer

  3. Setup Lead Collection OR Appointment Scheduling

    1. Lead Collection

    2. Appointment Sched

      1. Understand limitations

      2. Consider alternative link based approach

That is all folks!

Last updated