Instructions allow you to customize the personality and behaviour of Hugo through different prompt. No more visual builder or conditional logic. Thanks to them, you can deploy an AI Agent that actually reflect your team's spirit and convey the right message to your customers.

Hugo is a next-generation AI support agent, integrated with Crisp.

While conversational at its core, Hugo goes beyond answering questions. He understands customer intent and context to proactively guide users toward resolution — just like a human support agent.

Built to autonomously handle a large share of incoming conversations, Hugo AI can also perform real actions through your integrations, such as checking account details, tracking orders, or issuing refunds, always within the rules you define.

By engaging proactively and providing concrete guidance, Hugo helps resolve issues faster and frees up your team to focus on complex cases.

Haven't met Hugo yet? Check out official resources

What are Instructions

Instructions are Hugo's prompting rules. They essentially are global behaviour prompts allowing you to shape Hugo's behaviour when he's handling conversations.

They don’t answer questions themselves, they are here to shape how Hugo thinks, speaks, and acts in every situation.

With Instructions, you can for instance define:

• ✔ Tone & personality → professional, friendly, concise, empathetic...
• ✔ Communication rules → answer length, emoji usage, enforce formal language, usage of bullet points or paragraphs...
• ✔ Boundaries → diverting from certain topics, topics to avoid or to recommend...
• ✔ Reasoning style → asking for clarification, providing suggestions, avoiding speculations...

Instructions are a set of rules that Hugo always keep in mind, and are applied to all of your conversations. They tell our AI Agent how to behave, not what to say once.

For instance, instruction should not be used to provide:

• ✘ Direct answers or factual content → E.g. "Our pricing is €49/month."
• ✘ Conditional logic or decision rules → E.g. "If the user asks for X, then do Y."
• ✘ Workflow, routing, or escalation actions → E.g. "Create a ticket / assign to sales / notify an agent."
• ✘ Business rules or policies → E.g. "Refunds are allowed within 14 days."

Also note that Hugo is pre-configured with native deep prompts. You do not need to use instructions to have reply in the proper language, avoid hallucinating, or only use the resources at his disposal for instance. Hugo does that natively for you.

Instructions should be focused on behaviours you want to change.

How to create Instructions

To add or manage your instructions, head over to Crisp to hit ⚡️ AI Agent, then navigate to Guidance → Instructions

Once you're there, simply hit the New Instruction button to create one, and:

1. Name your instruction (whichever name helps you manage it better)
2. Provide the instruction prompt, directed to Hugo
3. Save & enable your instruction to activate it

Easy as that, you're done!

Instruction examples

Here are a few hand-picked examples of good versus bad instruction usages, to help you better redact yours

✔ Example of a good instruction :

Never offer medical or health advice. If a user asks about allergies, intolerances, or health impacts of our cookies, do not speculate or give recommendations.
Instead, provide only factual ingredient or allergen information if explicitly available, and advise customers to consult a qualified health professional for medical or dietary advice.

✔ Example of a good instruction :

Be concise and factual.
Keep answers under 5 sentences unless explicitly asked for more details.
Avoid repetition and filler language.

✘ Example of an improper usage of instructions :

We ship our cookies worldwide. Estimated delivery is between 2 and 4 days in the US, and 5 to 10 days for the rest of the world.

✘ Example of an improper usage of instructions :

If a question is about sales or partnerships, assign it to Romain and mention him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Still have some questions which were not covered above? Perhaps you'll find our answer in this FAQ.

If your question does not figure here, share it with us directly by chat, we'll be available to assist you

Hugo doesn't seem to follow the instructions I provided, why is that?

Make sure that your instruction is indeed saved and enabled. This can be a frequent mistake, and easily overlooked.

If your instruction is properly enabled, but you still feel like Hugo isn't applying it, make sure that it matches the best practices

• your instructions should not be used to convey information / answer questions
• your instructions should only be used to shape Hugo's behaviour, tone and style

Also note that the more instructions (and the longer/vague they are), the more difficult it is for AI Agents to keep them in mind while replying to your conversations.

Instructions can be diluted and become "suggestion" to the AI's ears if they have several dozens to keep track of and apply in each of their response. We recommend focusing instructions for clear and important sets of rules.

Can I use Instructions to give Hugo information about our business?

Providing context to Hugo on your business and services is very important, even crucial. This is what allows AI Agent to have perspective and context when answering questions from your users.

However, instructions are not the right place for that.

We have prepared a dedicated setting for you to place this information, in: AI Agent → Agent → Settings → Business description.

Updated on: 02/02/2026