Write your system prompt in four sections: who the agent is, what it knows about your business, how it should communicate, and what it must never do — then test it with five real scenarios before deploying it with students.
Start with Identity, Not Instructions
The most common mistake educators make when writing a system prompt is jumping straight to task instructions: “Answer student questions. Be helpful. Use my course materials.” That produces a generic, flat agent. The better starting point is identity: who is this agent, what is its name, what role does it play in your campus, and what is its relationship to you as the educator? “You are Aria, the student support agent for TrainingSites Academy. You work alongside James, the lead educator, and your job is to help students navigate the campus, answer common questions, and encourage them when they feel stuck.” That one paragraph fundamentally changes how the agent positions itself in every response.
Build the Four Sections
After identity, add knowledge: everything the agent needs to know to do its job — your course structure, your teaching philosophy, who your students are, your common student questions and their answers, your platform stack. This section can be long. Longer is better than shorter when it comes to knowledge context, as long as it stays organized and factual.
Then add behavior guidelines: how the agent writes (tone, length, vocabulary level), when it asks clarifying questions versus when it answers directly, and how it handles uncertainty. Finally, add boundaries: what the agent escalates to you, what it declines to engage with, and what it says when it does not know something. “If a student asks about pricing, direct them to the pricing page and let James know.” That instruction prevents the agent from guessing at answers that could create real problems.
What This Means for Educators
As a coach or trainer deploying a campus agent, your system prompt is the difference between an agent that represents you well and one that embarrasses you. Write it the way you would write onboarding documentation for a new team member who will talk to your students unsupervised. Then test it. Ask it the five hardest questions your students typically ask. If the answers are not what you would say, revise the prompt until they are.
The Simple Rule
Identity, knowledge, behavior, boundaries — in that order. Test with real scenarios before deploying. Revise based on what you see. A system prompt is a living document that gets better every time you update it, not a one-time creation you set and forget.