What your agent answers
These settings keep your agent on your subjects instead of answering like a general chatbot. They also set what it says, and offers, when it has no answer.
Change them
On the agent, open Settings, then Rules. Each group shows its current setting before you open it.
What it answers holds your subjects, how firmly it declines and the off-limits topics. When it can’t answer holds what it says and what happens next.
It appears at the top of the page once you change something, beside a line naming the groups you changed. It saves them all, and nothing waits for a train. If you try to leave with something unsaved, hiy asks first.
What it answers
What you cover
List the subjects your agent should answer on, up to 10. Leave it empty and it works them out from its profile and sources, which is usually fine, but naming them is more precise. Turn on Show to visitors to show the first three as Helps with on the welcome screen.
How firmly it declines
Off-topic questions has three choices:
- Strict only answers what your material supports, and says “I don’t have the details on that here” to anything else.
- Balanced answers within your subjects and warmly declines unrelated things, such as trivia, coding help or homework, while saying what it can help with.
- Loose leads with your material but helps with nearby general questions, and still declines anything clearly unrelated.
When it turns down a question outside your subjects, it says what it can help with, taken from What you cover, or from its name and profile when that list is empty.
An Expert Twin starts on Balanced. Support and Team Agents start on Strict, because an honest “I don’t have that” beats a confident guess about your product. Change it whenever you like.
Off-limits topics
Subjects your agent won’t discuss even though they’re yours, such as your family or client names. Add up to 10. They apply whatever you chose above, so adding a subject never reopens one. On an Expert Twin or a Team Agent, the personality interview can add to this list too.
When it can’t answer
It says is the sentence your agent uses, in its own voice, up to 200 characters. Leave it empty and it uses its own words. Whatever you write must start by saying it doesn’t know: “I don’t have the details on that here, so I won’t guess.” works, “Great question! I don’t have that.” is refused.
Then is what the visitor can do next:
- Hand over (Support Agents): they leave an email for your team. This is the same setting as Handing over to a person.
- Ask for details (Expert Twins): they leave their details so you can reply. This is the same setting as Follow-up requests.
- Link to a page: a button to a page you choose.
- Nothing: it says so and stops.
Name on your replies
What visitors read on a reply you or a teammate send in a chat you took over. Not on Team Agents.
- First name + business (the default): “Sam · Acme”.
- Business only: “Acme team”.
- First name only: “Sam”.
The business is your agent’s name. Someone with no first name on their profile shows as the business.
A note on gaps
Declining isn’t failure. The clearest “I don’t have that” answers become questions on Unanswered. Answer one and your agent knows it from then on, which is why the honest setting is the useful one.
Good to know
- Some things never change: the dashed card around the reply, the count of searches it ran, the question reaching Unanswered, the safety handover and the AI label.
- Only a question your material doesn’t cover gets the dashed card. Off-topic, unclear and safety replies, and a reply to “talk to a person”, read as plain answers.
- A question that matches nothing in your material gets the dashed card and reaches Unanswered, but offers no person the first time. A visitor who asks for one, or a second miss in the same chat, is offered one.
- Choosing Link to a page or Nothing on a Support Agent turns its handover off.
- Only English wording is checked for “says it doesn’t know”, so write the sentence in your agent’s language.
- Everything here is read back, in full, in the Guardrails section of the agent card on its Overview.
Related
The greeting and suggested questions visitors see first.
When your agent hands a chat to a person, who it reaches, and when it does so by itself.
Every question your agents couldn’t answer: open, dismissed and taught.
Change your agent by asking, and approve each change first.