The Prompt & Tools tab
The system prompt
The system prompt is the agent’s standing brief. Callivox describes it as:The agent’s standing instructions — its role, tone, and rules. Supports Markdown (headings, bold, lists). This is sent with every message before the conversation.A new Prompting Agent starts with
You are a helpful assistant. — replace it.
Writing one that works
- Say who the agent is and who it’s talking to. “You are the support assistant for Northwind Bikes. You talk to customers who have already bought a bike.”
- Set the tone in concrete terms. “Two or three sentences. No emoji. Never use exclamation marks.” is more useful than “be professional”.
- List what it must not do. Refunds it can’t approve, prices it must not quote, promises it must not make. Rules stated as prohibitions hold better than rules stated as preferences.
- Tell it what to do when it doesn’t know. For example, “If the answer isn’t in the knowledge base, say you’ll check with a colleague and hand off.” Pair this with the handoff rules on the Behavior tab.
- Use headings and bullets. The editor supports Markdown, and structure makes long prompts easier for both you and the agent to follow.
- Don’t paste your policies in. Long reference material belongs in a knowledge base, not the prompt — the prompt is re-sent with every single message.
Knowledge bases
A knowledge base is a collection of your own documents that agents can search when they answer. Instead of putting your help centre in the prompt, you add it once as a knowledge base and point agents at it — the agent then pulls in only the passages relevant to the question in front of it. Knowledge bases live under AI → Knowledge Bases, and need a plan that includes the knowledge base feature.A knowledge base and its documents
Create a knowledge base
1
Click + New KB
Type a name and confirm. Callivox drops you straight into the new knowledge base.
2
Add a description
Optional, but it helps when you have several. Click Save when the Unsaved changes
indicator appears.
3
Add your first document
Three cards on the page take sources — see below.
Adding documents
All three cards stay on the page — there’s no separate “add document” dialog. Each new document
appears in the Documents list with its type and a status:
Fix the underlying problem — a bad file, or a top-up — then
use the ↻ button on the row, or Re-evaluate failed above the list to retry every stuck
document at once.
Each knowledge base has a Used by panel showing which agents reference it. Check that panel
before you delete one — the confirmation warns that it “can’t be undone” and that “any agents
using it will lose access to these documents.”
Attaching a knowledge base to an agent
On the agent’s Prompt & Tools tab, pick one from the Knowledge base dropdown.(none) is
the default. One agent uses one knowledge base at a time.
If the selected knowledge base has since been deleted, the picker shows a red Unknown knowledge
base warning with a Clear button.
Attaching a knowledge base doesn’t guarantee the agent uses it. Say so in the prompt — for
example, “Answer product questions from the knowledge base. If it isn’t in there, don’t guess.”
Tools and functions
A tool lets an agent do something instead of only saying something: check an order, book a slot, look up a subscription. Behind the scenes a tool is a call to one of your own systems, which the agent decides to make when it needs the answer. Tools live under AI → Tools / Functions. You attach them to an agent from the Tools picker at the top of the Prompt & Tools tab — pick as many as the agent should be able to call. If you have none yet, the picker shows “No tools yet. Create a tool →”.Building a tool
1
Name it
Lowercase letters, digits and underscores only — for example
get_order_status. A handful of
names are reserved because Callivox already provides them: search_kb, transfer_to_human,
now, get_company_name and submit_objective_data.2
Describe it under Basics
“Explain what this tool does so the AI knows when to call it.” This description is the only
thing the agent reads when deciding whether the tool is relevant, so be specific: “Look up the
delivery status of an order by its order number” beats “order tool”.
3
Fill in the Request section
The Endpoint to call, the Method, and a Timeout (seconds) between 1 and 60
(10 by default).
4
Define the Parameters
Each parameter has a name, a type, and where it goes in the request. A parameter sourced from
the model is one the agent works out from the conversation — such as an order number the
customer just gave you. A parameter sourced from context is filled in automatically from the
conversation itself, so the agent can’t get it wrong.Mark a parameter required when the tool can’t run without it, and describe it — the agent
reads those descriptions too.
5
Add Headers
Key/value pairs for anything the endpoint needs, such as an API key. Values can point at a
stored secret rather than being typed in as plain text.
Assist agents don’t get the tools picker. Their tab is called Prompt & Knowledge — prompt
and knowledge base only. See Assist agents.
Next steps
Behavior and handoff
Memory, escalation rules, and objectives.
Flows
Script the conversation step by step instead.