Read or edit the assistant's prompts
What prompt access covers
Your assistant follows written instructions, its prompts. An owner or admin can let you read or edit each of them on its own:
- a playbook's prompt and its examples, and its reply guidance for comments that match no trigger (on the Comment Triggers page, which only owners and admins open);
- a phase's prompt and examples, and its conditions: the sentences that end the phase (see phases);
- a routine's summary, instructions and checklist, and a report routine's images: each image's label and description, which images the report sees, and its shared images such as a logo;
- the handbook;
- a KPI's question and its answers;
- a comment trigger's brief, fallback message and public replies, and its delivery title (on the Comment Triggers page, which only owners and admins open);
- when the assistant fills a custom column.
Prompt access covers only this text. How things are wired together, such as which phases a customer moves between on a timer or an event, which routines a phase uses, a KPI's playbooks, or a comment trigger's keywords, stays with owners and admins.
Creating a new routine, KPI, comment trigger or assistant-filled column also stays with owners and admins, and so do a report routine's field names, which name the values it records.
There are two permissions, granted separately for each prompt:
- Read text: see the prompt's text.
- Edit text: change it. Editing needs Read text on the same prompt: without it, Edit text has no effect.
Deleting a phase, routine, KPI, comment trigger or playbook needs Edit text on its prompt when it has text, and Edit rules when it has business rules of its own. Deleting a phase also needs Edit text on each other phase with a condition leading into it, since the delete removes that condition.
Read or edit on a playbook covers its prompt and every phase in it, including phases added later. A Deny on one phase takes that phase out.
With Read text on a playbook, its prompt also shows its Business rules section below the prompt, and a phase's prompt shows that phase's own rules. Changing the rules takes a permission of its own, Edit rules (see business-rules).
Where to find your prompts
Open Prompts in the sidebar. It lists every prompt you can read, grouped by playbook (its prompt, then its phases), then routines, Handbook, KPIs, Comment Triggers and Columns. Prompts you can only read are marked Read only. Without access to any prompt, Prompts is not in your sidebar. Owners and admins edit each playbook's prompt here too.
Click a prompt to open it. Text is edited as plain text; lists such as the handbook's policies or a comment trigger's public replies take one item per line, and structured parts such as examples, KPI answers or a routine's checklist are edited as JSON. Some phase text is shown for reference and cannot be changed here.
Save stores only what you changed, and the assistant uses it from the next message it answers. Discard changes puts the text back as it was saved.
When a save doesn't go through
- Someone else changed this prompt: another person saved it while you were editing. Your edits stay on the page; Reload shows their version (you are asked before your edits are dropped).
- Your access changed: an owner or admin changed what you can reach. The list refreshes to what you can see now.
- This prompt no longer exists: it was deleted while you had it open.
- Fix the JSON: a structured part doesn't read as valid JSON; correct it and save again.
How owners and admins grant it
On a team member's access page (Settings → Team, then click the team member), the Prompts card has a Read text and an Edit text cell for each prompt. See team-member-access for how the cells, allows and denies work.
The owner and the members of Admins hold every prompt, minus any Deny set on their own access page. A prompt they are denied reading shows locked in the admin editors: its text is hidden and can't be saved over. Views that show the assistant's whole reply instructions, such as a reply preview or the Simulator, need Read text on every prompt those instructions include, a column's note for the assistant and a comment trigger's brief among them. The same denies hold when they consult with the Yapper consultant or their own AI assistant (see consultant and connect-ai-assistant), and approving a proposal that changes a prompt's text needs Edit text on it.
The consultant can also propose prompt access for a team member: the proposal names each prompt and the Read text and Edit text it sets, and someone who can approve proposals approves it like any other access change. A proposal that newly gives Edit text says so, since the team member's next save changes what the assistant follows.