System Prompts

Last updated: 2025-11-14

Overview

The system prompt defines an AI assistant's behavior and response style. A carefully designed system prompt enables an AI assistant to assume a specific role, follow specific rules, and answer questions in a way that meets your business needs.

Include the AI assistant's role description and instructions, including the rules and SOPs it should follow when responding. Think of these as rules that must be followed for every response. Include only the essentials, as an excessive number of instructions may overwhelm the AI and cause it to disregard some rules. Store large amounts of data, or data that only needs to be retrieved when a related question is asked, in the knowledge base.

Metadata Processing

What Is Metadata?

Metadata is additional information that describes knowledge base documents, such as:

• Document category

• Creation date

• Author information

• Permission labels

• Other custom attributes

In a RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) system, metadata plays an important role by helping the AI assistant filter and use knowledge base content more precisely.

Optimized Metadata Exclusion Logic

The MaiAgent platform has optimized its metadata processing logic to ensure that the system handles metadata more accurately.

Improvements

Removed duplicate exclusion logic

In previous versions, the system might repeatedly check and exclude certain metadata keys, causing unnecessary performance overhead. The new version removes this duplicate logic to ensure:

• Improved processing efficiency: Reduces repeated checks

• Clearer logic: Prevents the same exclusion rules from running multiple times

• Better maintainability: Simplifies the code structure

Scope of impact

This optimization primarily affects the system's internal metadata processing. For users:

• ✅ Metadata filtering continues to work normally

• ✅ Retrieval performance is improved

• ✅ Answer accuracy remains consistent

• ✅ No changes to existing settings are required

Using Metadata in System Prompts

Basic Usage

In a system prompt, you can instruct the AI assistant how to use metadata:

You are a professional customer service assistant. When answering questions:
1. Prioritize documents labeled as "official"
2. If no official document is found, refer to documents labeled as "community"
3. Always state the category of the information source in your answer

Advanced Metadata Usage

Permission management

Only use documents appropriate for the user's permission level:
- VIP customers: May reference all documents
- General customers: May only reference documents labeled "public"
- New customers: May only reference documents in the "basic" category

Recency control

Follow these rules when answering questions:
1. Prioritize documents updated within the last three months
2. If you use an older document, state in your answer that the latest information may need to be verified
3. Ignore documents labeled "archived"

Multilingual support

Select documents based on the user's language preference:
- Traditional Chinese users: Use documents with lang="zh-TW"
- English users: Use documents with lang="en"
- If the corresponding language is unavailable, use the default language and explain this

Metadata Best Practices

1. Define a Clear Metadata Structure

Create a standardized metadata schema:

{
  "category": "product-info",
  "language": "zh-TW",
  "access_level": "public",
  "last_updated": "2025-11-14",
  "status": "active"
}

2. Clearly Describe Metadata Usage Rules in the System Prompt

# Document Usage Rules

## Priority
1. status = "active" and access_level matches the user's permissions
2. category matches the question topic
3. last_updated is within the last six months

## Exclusion Rules
- Ignore documents where status = "draft"
- Ignore documents with an access_level higher than the user's permissions

3. Review Metadata Settings Regularly

• Confirm that metadata categories meet actual usage requirements

• Check for unused metadata keys

• Evaluate the impact of metadata on retrieval performance

Technical Details

Metadata Processing Flow

1. The user asks a question
   ↓
2. The system parses the question and extracts key information
   ↓
3. Candidate documents are filtered based on metadata
   ↓
4. The retrieval system finds the most relevant document excerpts
   ↓
5. The LLM generates an answer based on the system prompt and retrieval results

Performance Considerations

• Indexing: Metadata is indexed when a file is uploaded

• Query efficiency: Simple metadata filtering usually completes within milliseconds

• Complex queries: Metadata filtering with multiple conditions may take longer

System Limitations

• No more than 20 metadata keys are recommended for each document

• Use short strings or numbers for metadata values

• Avoid storing large amounts of text in metadata

System Prompt Example

You are a professional XXX AI assistant.

\ You should (enhance responses):

1. Provide clear, accurate, and helpful answers

2. Maintain a friendly and professional conversational tone

3. Answer in the user's language; use Traditional Chinese when answering in Chinese

4. Avoid giving harmful or inappropriate advice

5. Respect user privacy and do not disclose sensitive information

6. Use correct Traditional Chinese in responses

7. Adjust the level of detail based on the context

8. Provide additional suggestions or related information when appropriate

9. Before answering, confirm that the user has provided sufficiently clear information; answer only after it is clear

10. Use examples when appropriate to explain complex concepts

You should not (response restrictions):

1. Spread misinformation or unverified claims

2. Make biased or discriminatory statements

3. Discuss illegal or inappropriate content

4. Pretend to be a real person

5. Exceed the AI assistant's capabilities

6. For questions outside the scope of the knowledge base, reply, "Sorry, I am currently unable to answer this question"

System Prompt Template

# Persona
(Describe the AI assistant's role)

# Context
(Describe the task background)

# Task
## Input
(Describe the data that will be provided)

## Output
(Describe the output, including its format or tone; you may also provide a Template)

<template>
...
</template>

# Instructions
(Describe the task steps)

1. ...
2. ...
3. ...
...

# Example
(Provide 1–3 output examples)

<example>
...
</example>

<example>
...
</example>

...

# Constraints
(Describe the output restrictions)

1. ...
2. ...
3. ...
...

Related Resources

• System Prompt Design Guide

• Document Management: Tags and Metadata

• Query Metadata

AI System Prompt Generator