Instructions

agent/instructions.md is the agent's system prompt — the always-on context that defines its personality, rules, and approach. Zett loads it verbatim as the manifest's instructions string and sends it with every turn.

You are a helpful AI agent built with Zett on Cencori.
 
Be concise, accurate, and use your tools when appropriate.
Never fabricate data — if you don't know, say so.

That's it: plain Markdown, no front-matter required.

Resolution order

When loading an agent, Zett looks for instructions in this order:

1. instructions.md
2. instructions.ts (or another supported module extension)
3. system.md — deprecated; emits a DEPRECATED_SYSTEM_SLOT warning. Rename to instructions.md.

If none exist, the agent falls back to "You are a helpful AI agent."

Programmatic instructions

The arcie/instructions subpath exposes helpers for building instructions in code:

import { defineInstructions, loadInstructions } from "arcie/instructions";
 
// From a file path (resolved against cwd):
const fromFile = defineInstructions("./agent/instructions.md");
 
// Or pass an InstructionsConfig directly:
const inline = defineInstructions({ content: "You are a terse assistant." });
 
// Load whatever instructions an agent directory provides:
const loaded = loadInstructions("./agent"); // InstructionsConfig | null

interface InstructionsConfig {
  content: string;
  filePath?: string;
}

defineInstructions throws if you pass a path that doesn't exist (Instructions file not found: …).