# What is a Base System Prompt? Think of the base system prompt as the "rules" or "instructions" the AI agent will follow. When you first create an AI agent, it has no context or idea of what you're trying to do. Think of it like a 6th grader. We need to provide clear and concise instructions in order for the AI agent to know what to do. The base system prompt is where you define: * Personality for the AI agent * Tone of the AI responses * Guidelines on how the AI agent will respond * Guard rails for edge cases * How to act in certain scenarios * Formatting of the AI responses This input trains your Al bot, instructing it on how to interact on top of the dynamic information loaded from the knowledge base about the business. Think of your bot as an initially uninformed entity, learning through this setup process. Example of a Base System Prompt: --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.stammer.ai/stammer.ai-docs/chat-ai-agents/prompting/what-is-a-base-system-prompt.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.