Agent Best Practices

Good agents combine focused instructions, clean knowledge, tested actions, and clear escalation paths.

Keep instructions operational

Write instructions as behavior rules the agent can follow. Avoid long product essays in the system instruction; put factual content in sources instead.

Separate facts from workflows

Use sources for product facts, policies, and help content. Use actions for operations that change state, fetch private data, create tickets, send messages, or schedule follow-up.

Test high-risk paths

Before deployment, test:

• Pricing, cancellation, refund, shipping, billing, and compliance questions.
• Questions that should trigger escalation.
• Questions that should not trigger actions.
• Identity-gated workflows for logged-in users.
• Unknown or adversarial questions.

Use identity verification for logged-in users

When the agent needs account-specific context, verify identity with JWT or HMAC. Do not pass secrets, payment data, or sensitive private fields in public widget attributes.

Monitor and iterate

Review analytics and conversation feedback regularly. Update source content when repeated questions receive incomplete answers, and tighten actions when users reach unsupported paths.