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A goal is one thing you want the participant scored on after a call — “asked discovery questions”, “explained the trade-offs”, “stayed calm under objection”. You write it once on a scenario. After every meeting on that scenario, Waterr reads the transcript, scores the participant 0–5 on each goal, writes short feedback, and puts the results on the meeting. Goals are for grading the human. They never change how the agent behaves during the call — the agent cannot see them. To shape the agent, use the scenario script and Guardrails.

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What you get back

For every goal, one result: Feedback is written to the participant in the imperative (“Open with a question before pitching”), and never names the goal — it reads as coaching, not a rubric. Across all goals, the meeting also gets average_score (mean score as a 0–100 percentage), total_score, summary, strengths and growth_areas. Everything lands in one place:
Analysis runs automatically about 30–60 seconds after the meeting ends. Poll analysis_status or subscribe to the session.analysis_complete webhook. See Post-Meeting Data for the full response.
A scenario with no active goals still gets a summary, title and highlights after each call — just no scores. The built-in Plus One assistant scenarios work this way on purpose.

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When to use goals

Reach for goals when you need a number per conversation for a person:
  • Screening and interviews — score every candidate on the same 3–5 criteria, then route on average_score.
  • Training and practice — sales, support, negotiation, language drills. The participant practices against the agent; goals tell them how they did.
  • Certification and compliance — “did the rep state the disclosure?”, “did the nurse confirm the patient’s identity?” become a 0–5 with evidence.
  • Coaching at scale — the written feedback is good enough to show directly to the participant.
Don’t use goals when:
  • You want to judge the agent (did it stay on script, was it polite). That’s a Studio evaluation metric, not a goal.
  • You want to stop something happening on the call. That’s a guardrail.
  • The call is open-ended help with no “right” outcome (an assistant, a brainstorm). Leave the scenario goal-less and use the summary.

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Writing a goal

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string
required
The scenario this goal scores. A goal belongs to one scenario; make another goal for another scenario.
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string
required
Short label, max 100 characters. Shown in Studio and returned in goal_results[].goal.
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string
What the grader reads. This is the whole game — see the tips below.
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string
For you and your team. Not used for scoring.
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boolean
Default true. An inactive goal stays on the scenario but is skipped at scoring time.

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Instructions that score well

The grader is an LLM reading the transcript with your instructions and the scenario’s persona in front of it. It is only as consistent as the anchors you give it.

Anchor the ends of the scale

Say what a 5 looks like and what a 0 looks like. “Score 1–10” with no anchors drifts between calls.

Describe behaviour, not virtue

“Asked a clarifying question before answering” is observable in a transcript. “Was thoughtful” is not.

Say what to deduct for

“Deduct 2 if they quote a price before asking about budget.” Negative rules catch the failure you actually care about.

Keep it to 3–5 goals

Each goal is a separate grading pass. More than five dilutes the feedback and slows analysis.
The score is on the transcript only. Tone of voice, pauses and talk-time are not visible to the grader; if you need those, use the speech analytics fields (filler_words, repetitions, …) that come back on the same analysis.

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Turning goals on and off per scenario

PUT /scenarios/{id} with a goals array sets which of the scenario’s goals are active — everything listed becomes active, everything else on that scenario becomes inactive:
Or flip one goal directly with PUT /goals/{id} and { "active": false }.
POST /scenarios/create-with-gpt writes 3–4 goals for you from the scenario description. Edit their instructions afterwards rather than starting from blank.

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Changed your goals? Re-score

Scores are computed once, when the meeting ends. If you rewrite a goal’s instructions and want old meetings graded against the new version:

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Endpoints