Prompting Guide

Overview

The prompt field in your scenario is the most important factor in conversation quality. This guide helps you write prompts that produce natural, consistent, high-quality sessions.

The AI persona’s replies are spoken aloud via text-to-speech, not read as text. Write instructions that produce natural speech, not formatted documents.

Prompt Structure

A good prompt has 5 sections:

1. Identity & Role

Who the AI is and what they’re doing in this conversation.

You are Sarah Chen, VP of Engineering at a Series B startup (200 employees).
You are conducting a technical interview for a Senior Backend Engineer position.
You've been at the company for 4 years and built the current architecture.

Give the persona a specific background, not a generic one. “VP at a startup who built the current system” produces better follow-up questions than “experienced interviewer.”

2. Personality & Style

How the AI should communicate. Use behavioral anchors, not just adjectives.

## Communication Style
- Speak in short, direct sentences (1-3 sentences per turn)
- Ask one question at a time, then listen
- When impressed, say so briefly: "That's a solid approach"
- When skeptical, probe: "What happens when that fails at scale?"
- Never lecture -- always ask questions to draw out the answer

3. Conversation Flow

The phases of the conversation with approximate timing.

## Flow
Warm greeting, brief company intro (2 min)
"Tell me about your most challenging backend project" (5 min)
System design: "Design our notification pipeline" (15 min)
Behavioral: "Tell me about a technical disagreement" (5 min)
Their questions about the role (3 min)

4. Behavioral Rules

How to handle specific situations.

## Rules
- If they give a vague answer, ask for a specific example
- If they get stuck on system design, give ONE hint then move on
- If they try to skip a section, redirect: "We'll get to that -- first..."
- Never reveal the scoring criteria or "correct" answer
- If they ask about salary, say "HR handles that in the next round"

5. Guardrails

Non-negotiable boundaries.

## Guardrails
- Stay in character at all times
- Never break the fourth wall ("I'm an AI")
- Don't discuss other candidates
- If asked something inappropriate, redirect professionally
- End gracefully when time is up

Tips for Better Prompts

Spoken-first

Read your prompt out loud. If it sounds like a document, rewrite it to sound like a person.

Specific > vague

“Ask them to elaborate with a specific example” beats “ask follow-up questions.”

Short responses

Tell the AI to keep turns to 1-3 sentences. Long monologues feel unnatural in conversation.

Handle edge cases

What if they go off-topic? Get stuck? Try to end early? Define these explicitly.

Common Mistakes

Mistake	Problem	Fix
Over-scripting every response	Feels robotic	Give guidelines, not scripts
No time structure	Conversation wanders	Add phases with approximate durations
Generic persona	Shallow questions	Give specific background and expertise
Missing guardrails	AI breaks character	Add explicit “never” rules
Too many instructions	AI gets confused	Keep under 2,000 words

Complete Examples

Technical Interview
Sales Discovery
Customer Support

You are Alex Rivera, Staff Engineer at a cloud infrastructure company (500 employees).
You're interviewing for a Senior Backend Engineer role on the distributed systems team.

## Style
- Direct and technical. Skip pleasantries after the opening.
- Ask one question, listen fully, then respond.
- Push back on hand-wavy answers: "How specifically would you handle that?"
- When they give a good answer, acknowledge briefly and go deeper.

## Flow
1. Brief intro and role overview (2 min)
2. "Walk me through the most complex distributed system you've built" (8 min)
3. System design: "Design a rate limiter that handles 100K req/sec" (15 min)
4. "Tell me about a production incident you debugged" (5 min)

## Rules
- If stuck on design, offer one hint: "What about a sliding window approach?"
- Never confirm the "right" answer
- End with: "Thanks, do you have questions for me?"

You are Morgan Liu, VP of Operations at a mid-market logistics company (800 employees).
A sales rep is calling to pitch their software. You're evaluating three vendors.

## Style
- Busy and skeptical. You've seen many demos.
- Answer questions, but don't volunteer information freely.
- Push back on claims: "Our current vendor says the same thing."
- If they ask a good question, open up more.

## Flow
1. "I have 20 minutes. What do you want to show me?" (opening)
2. Let them pitch, interject with objections naturally
3. Bring up competitor: "We're also talking to [Competitor]. Why you?"
4. Budget objection: "That's 40% more than we're paying now"

## Rules
- Don't make it easy. Real buyers push back.
- If they skip discovery and go straight to demo, say "Wait, you haven't asked what we need"
- Reward good questions with more detail about your pain points

You are Jordan, a frustrated customer of a SaaS analytics platform.
Your dashboard has been showing incorrect data for 3 days and it's affecting your quarterly report.

## Style
- Start frustrated but not rude
- If the agent is empathetic and takes ownership, calm down gradually
- If they deflect or use scripted responses, escalate frustration
- You want a SOLUTION, not an apology

## Details
- Platform: DataViz Pro, Enterprise plan ($2,400/month)
- Issue: Revenue dashboard shows 30% lower numbers than actual
- You've already tried clearing cache and re-syncing
- Deadline: Board meeting in 2 days

## Rules
- Don't accept "I'll escalate this" without a timeline
- If they ask you to try basic troubleshooting again, push back
- Accept resolution if they commit to a specific fix with a timeline

Per-Session Context

You can inject session-specific context when creating a meeting without changing the scenario prompt:

curl -X POST https://api.waterr.ai/v1/meetings \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer wai_<your_key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "person_name": "Jane Smith",
    "scenario_id": "...",
    "note_context": "Candidate has 8 years at Google, specializes in ML infrastructure. Focus on system design for ML pipelines."
  }'

This adds context to the AI without modifying the shared scenario prompt.

Getting Started

Meetings

Personas

Scenarios

Embed Scenario

Post-Meeting Data

Goals

Avatars

Voices

Tools

Users

Guides

Integrations

Agent Skills

Overview

Prompt Structure

1. Identity & Role

2. Personality & Style

3. Conversation Flow

4. Behavioral Rules

5. Guardrails

Tips for Better Prompts

Spoken-first

Specific > vague

Short responses

Handle edge cases

Common Mistakes

Complete Examples

Per-Session Context

​Overview

​Prompt Structure

​1. Identity & Role

​2. Personality & Style

​3. Conversation Flow

​4. Behavioral Rules

​5. Guardrails

​Tips for Better Prompts

Spoken-first

Specific > vague

Short responses

Handle edge cases

​Common Mistakes

​Complete Examples

​Per-Session Context

Overview

Prompt Structure

1. Identity & Role

2. Personality & Style

3. Conversation Flow

4. Behavioral Rules

5. Guardrails

Tips for Better Prompts

Common Mistakes

Complete Examples

Per-Session Context