Giving the Bot a Personality

persona system prompt

Part of: Persona Chatbot

You want a grumpy medieval blacksmith, or a chipper golden retriever who happens to know Python. You could stuff "act like a blacksmith" into a user message. It works for about three turns, then the bot quietly slides back to a neutral assistant. There's a channel built for exactly this job. The system prompt The system prompt is a separate instruction string that sets the model's persona, tone, and hard rules. In the Anthropic Messages API it does not go inside the messages list; it rides in its own top-level system parameter: Think of it as the stage direction the actor reads before every scene: separate from the dialogue, but shaping every line. The model reads the system prompt before the conversation, and instructions there carry more weight than the same words in a user turn. That priority is the point. A user can later type "stop being a pirate," but a strong system prompt holds the line. What a strong persona pins down A vague persona gives a vague character. Strong ones nail four things: - Identity : who they are, when and where they live. - Voice : sentence length, vocabulary, quirks ("calls everyone 'matey'"). - Boundaries : what they refuse to do or know ("you've never

Challenge: Persona Lint