Identity & tone

In the panel, Assistant › Identity & tone keeps who your assistant is, how it speaks and how carefully it answers in one place. On every answer the assistant combines its identity, its instructions and your knowledge base.

The page has four sections: Identity, Tone & rules, Assistant templates and Answer quality. On a wide screen an On this page list sits on the left and marks the section with unsaved changes; the collapsed How it works box under the title sums up what is saved when and who can change it. Until 30 October 2026 these settings were spread out (the persona card on Overview, the screens formerly called Template Store and System Instructions, Settings and the two widget pages); the values moved as they were, and the old addresses lead to this page.

Identity

The assistant your customers talk to: its role (persona), its name and the business it speaks for. The Introduce your assistant card on Overview and the “now lives here” notes on the chat bubble pages bring you to this section.

What will you use your assistant for?

If you haven't picked a use yet and no persona is active, the section opens with this question. The options: E-commerce / Online sales, Customer support, B2B / Enterprise sales, Corporate knowledge / HR, Education, Healthcare, Finance, Real estate and General / I'll choose later. On Shopify plans only the fields your plan includes are listed.

Continue saves your choice right away. If your plan allows it, a persona that fits your choice is assigned and the instructions are built from it; you then fill in fields such as the assistant's name with Edit identity. If your plan doesn't allow it, the panel says which plan unlocks the persona and offers See plans. General / I'll choose later assigns no persona; the assistant answers with the default instructions.

Role (persona), name and tone

Row	What it shows
Role (persona)	The active persona, with Change (scrolls to Assistant templates) and Turn off. Without a persona: “No persona; the assistant answers with the default instructions.” and Choose a persona.
Assistant name	The persona's name field; Not set if empty. If the persona has no such field, it says so. Without a persona you can write the name into the instructions (e.g. “Your name is Ada.”).
Business it speaks for	The persona's business field; on the store assistant, the store's name.
Tone	The persona's tone field: how the assistant speaks.
Company name (account)	Read-only: Company name.

Edit identity opens the persona's template window on the Customize tab, with the identity fields first. Name, business and tone are fields of the persona: when you change them and click Apply template, the instructions are rebuilt from the persona's template (How to apply a persona).

Turn off asks for confirmation: once the persona is off, the instructions are cleared too and the assistant answers with the default instructions; unsaved changes to the instructions are lost as well.

Before 30 October 2026 the assistant's name and tone were described among the widget's appearance settings; the bubble's colour and welcome are still under Chat bubble › Appearance.

Company name

Company name (account) in the last row belongs to your account and doesn't change here: it appears in the panel, emails, the help site and the bubble's default welcome. To change it, use the Company details link next to it (Account › Company).

Tone & rules (Instructions)

The Instructions are free text that shapes how the assistant behaves: tone, boundaries, language. The assistant reads them on every answer. The badge on the right of the section says whether the text is Default or Customized. This text was formerly called “System instructions”.

• The default instructions tell the assistant to use only the information it is given, to say so when it doesn't know, and to keep answers short and to the point. The note above the box recommends keeping the “use ONLY the information provided” rule so the assistant does not invent facts.
• Saving: once you change the text, the save bar appears at the bottom of the page; click Save. If you empty the box and save, the instructions go back to the default. The character count shows under the box.
• Places to review: after saving, the panel lists unfilled template fields, labels followed by nothing (e.g. “Email:”) and bracketed placeholders (e.g. [your phone number]) in a “Places to review in the instructions: N” warning. Saving isn't blocked, but the AI tends to make up what an empty label asks for, so fill these in or remove them.
• Reset to default asks for confirmation; what you wrote is deleted and the default instructions come back right away.
• Try it in assistant chat takes you to Assistant chat; try the instructions you saved there.
• Writing tips: to stop made-up answers, a clear rule such as “use ONLY the information provided, never invent what you do not know”; for the tone, “be warm and helpful” or “be professional and formal”; for boundaries, “do not comment on competitors”; for language, “always answer in English”.

If you apply a template or change the identity, this text is rebuilt from the template. Which language the assistant answers in: Chat bubble › Reply language.

Assistant templates

You pick a persona for your field, fill in its fields and apply it; the assistant then answers in that role. The section lists the templates with a search box and a category filter; the active template and your plan's template counter (e.g. “1 / 2 templates”) sit at the top, and templates that unlock on higher plans show locked. Clicking a template opens its window: the Content tab shows the template's sections, the Customize tab the fields to fill in; an optional Extra instruction is appended to the template. Apply template rebuilds the instructions from the template's text and the fields you filled in, and is saved right away. Ready-made personas and plan-based access: Assistant templates.

Answer quality

How the assistant finds the right information and thinks longer on hard questions. The two settings are saved differently.

Smart result ordering

When on, the passages found in the knowledge base are re-ordered before answering: more accurate, slightly slower. It is used for the answers of the knowledge assistant bubble on your website. A change is saved with Save on the save bar at the bottom of the page. Until 30 October 2026 the setting sat on the knowledge assistant widget's appearance card; if your plan has no knowledge assistant bubble, this row doesn't appear.

Deep thinking

There are two options: Off (the assistant always answers directly) and Automatic (the assistant switches to deep thinking on its own when a question is complex). When on, the assistant thinks longer on complex questions; answers are slower and cost more credits. Your choice is saved right away, and the selected card says Current choice. Deep thinking isn't available on every plan: then a Not included in your plan note and See plans appear, and Automatic stays locked. Until 30 October 2026 the setting was on the Settings screen.

Questions outside the knowledge base

There is no separate setting for this in the panel; this is how the assistant behaves:

• It doesn't make things up and says it doesn't know: the assistant answers only from your knowledge base (on the store assistant, also from your store's live data). If it finds nothing to stand on, it says it doesn't know; the default instructions use a sentence that points the customer to customer service.
• It offers to pass the visitor to your team: if meaningful questions go unanswered twice in a row, or the visitor seems upset, the chat bubble shows a “Shall I pass you to our team?” card once per conversation (Yes, pass me on · No, continue); if the visitor says no, it doesn't insist. Short messages such as greetings and thanks don't count as unanswered.
• It hands off to a person: if the customer asks for a person, or a handoff rule in Assistant › Automations matches (e.g. a topic rule), the conversation goes to your team (Human handoff).
• You write how it declines or redirects: put styles such as declining politely or pointing to a specific page or contact address into the Instructions (e.g. “For topics you don't know, point the customer to our contact page.”).
• It shows what's missing: unanswered questions are flagged; you can see them in the unanswered-question report and in Suggested articles and add them to your knowledge base.

The “Politely decline / Redirect / Escalate to a human” choice described in older guides doesn't exist in the panel; you get the same results in the ways above.

When is it saved?

The Instructions and Smart result ordering are saved with the save bar at the bottom of the page: after a change, “N unsaved changes · Discard · Save” appears, the changed section is marked Unsaved, and the panel asks before you leave without saving. If one of them can't be saved, the bar says which one and why; the other is still saved. The use choice (Continue), turning the persona off, applying a template, Reset to default and deep thinking are saved the moment you choose them.

Who can change it?

The page follows the Settings row of your role (Users & roles). Changing it needs edit access on that row; a role with view only can read it, the fields show locked and View fields appears instead of Edit identity. Smart ordering also needs edit on the Knowledge assistant row. By default the account owner and Admins use this screen; for the Editor, the Support agent and the Member the Settings row is off and the screen doesn't appear in the menu.