instructions are sent to the AI assistant at the start of every MCP session and prepended to every response from the along tool. They define the AI’s persona, scope constraints, answer style, and behavioral rules when working with a Safe’s knowledge.
Unlike ingestionInstructions, which run once when content is added, retrieval instructions are active throughout every AI interaction — they travel with the data.
When to use retrieval instructions
Useinstructions when you need the AI to:
- Stay focused on a specific topic area and decline out-of-scope questions
- Maintain a particular tone or persona (formal, technical, accessible)
- Always cite sources or use a specific citation format
- Follow formatting conventions (bullet points, structured summaries, prose)
- Apply hard behavioral rules (never speculate, always ask for clarification when ambiguous)
Parameters
What you can control
- Tone and persona — define whether the AI is formal or informal, expert-facing or accessible
- Scope constraints — restrict answers to a specific topic domain
- Context prioritization — prefer recent documents, primary sources, or specific content types
- Answer format — bullet points, prose, structured templates, citation style
- Behavioral rules — hard constraints like “never speculate” or “always ask for clarification”
How instructions are delivered
When a user connects to a Safe via MCP, Along sends theinstructions field as MCP server instructions during the initialize handshake. This means the AI assistant receives the instructions before any tool is called.
Every subsequent response from the along tool also prepends the instructions as a context header — [Instructions: ...] — at the start of the tool’s output. This ensures the instructions remain in scope for the AI throughout the session, even in long conversations where early context might otherwise be pushed out.
Examples
Customer success team
Sales team
Engineering knowledge base
Safe API keys can also carry their own
instructions field. When a request is made using a Safe API key that has its own instructions, those instructions are appended after the Safe’s instructions — separated by a horizontal rule. This lets different teams or integrations use the same Safe with different behavioral contexts, without needing to create separate Safes.