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Overview

System prompts are the primary way to customize agent behavior. A well-crafted prompt can significantly improve investigation accuracy, response quality, and team alignment.

Prompt Architecture

Section-by-Section Guide

1. Role & Identity

Define who the agent is and its primary purpose.
Include:
  • Organization name
  • Team the agent serves
  • Primary responsibility

2. Context & Knowledge

Provide infrastructure context the agent needs to know.
Include:
  • Cloud and infrastructure details
  • Service catalog with criticality
  • Data source locations
  • Important dashboards/runbooks

3. Guidelines & Process

Define how the agent should approach investigations.
Include:
  • Step-by-step investigation process
  • Priority/escalation rules
  • Common patterns you’ve observed
  • Preferred data source order

4. Constraints & Guardrails

Define what the agent should NOT do.
Include:
  • Explicit prohibitions
  • Escalation triggers
  • Security/compliance requirements
  • Cost control measures

5. Output Format

Define how responses should be structured.
Include:
  • Response structure
  • Required sections
  • Confidence level definitions
  • Example formats

Complete Example

Testing Prompts

Before deploying a new prompt:
1

Test with known scenarios

Run investigations for incidents you’ve already resolved
2

Compare outputs

Check if the new prompt produces better/worse results
3

Verify constraints

Ensure guardrails are respected
4

Review with team

Get feedback from SREs who will use it

Prompt Templates

Investigation Agent (Generic)

CI/CD Agent

Next Steps

Agent Configuration

Apply prompts to agents

Tools Catalog

See available tools to reference in prompts