Writing Guidelines

Guidelines are the rules and guardrails that shape how your agents behave. They govern tone, data handling, decision-making, and safety across your entire workspace or within specific workflows. This guide shows you how to create effective guidelines.

INFO

For the principles behind what makes a guideline worth its tokens, see the Authoring Rubric — the same rubric applies to skills and context files.

What is a guideline?

A guideline is a written rule that agents follow when performing tasks. Unlike workflow instructions (which describe what to do), guidelines describe how to do it — the standards, boundaries, and expectations that apply across multiple situations.

Step-by-step: Create a guideline

1. Open the Guidelines view

Navigate to Knowledge in the left sidebar, then select Guidelines. You see a list of existing guidelines and a New Guideline button.

2. Click New Guideline

This opens the guideline editor with a blank form.

3. Choose a category

Each guideline belongs to one of four categories. Pick the one that best fits the rule you are writing:

Category	What it governs	Example
Tone	Voice, writing style, and communication norms	"Use a professional but friendly tone. Avoid jargon."
Data	How information is accessed, handled, and formatted	"Always cite the data source when presenting statistics."
Decision	How choices are made and escalated	"Escalate any decision involving spending over $5,000."
Safety	Boundaries that must never be crossed	"Never share customer personal information outside the CRM."

TIP

When in doubt, use the Decision category. It is the most flexible and covers situations where you want to set clear expectations about judgment calls.

4. Write the rule

The Rule field is the actual instruction your agents follow. Write it as a clear, direct statement. Effective rules are:

• Specific — State exactly what to do or avoid. Vague rules lead to inconsistent behavior.
• Actionable — The agent should be able to follow the rule without guessing your intent.
• Concise — One rule per guideline. If you have multiple rules, create multiple guidelines.

Before and after examples

Vague (less effective):

Be careful with customer data.

Specific (more effective):

When referencing customer data, include only the customer's company name and deal stage. Never include personal email addresses, phone numbers, or contract values in summaries shared outside the CRM.

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Vague (less effective):

Write in a professional tone.

Specific (more effective):

Use a professional, concise tone. Write in active voice. Keep sentences under 25 words. Use bullet points for lists of three or more items. Avoid exclamation marks and emoji.

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Vague (less effective):

Ask before doing important things.

Specific (more effective):

Before sending any message to a customer-facing Slack channel, present the draft to the user for approval. Include the channel name and a preview of the message.

5. Set the scope

Scope determines where the guideline applies:

• Workspace — The guideline applies to all agents, all workflows, everything in this workspace. Use this for company-wide standards.
• Workflow — The guideline applies only when a specific workflow runs. Use this for workflow-specific rules.
• User — The guideline applies only during chat sessions with you specifically.

6. Set the activation mode

Activation mode determines when the guideline is loaded into an agent's context:

• Always — The guideline is included every time an agent performs a task within its scope. Use this for critical rules that must never be overlooked.
• When relevant — Pencel uses semantic matching to include the guideline only when the agent's current task is related to the guideline's content. This saves context space and keeps agents focused.

INFO

Always guidelines consume context space on every run, so keep them few and essential. Use When relevant for guidelines that apply only in specific situations. Pencel's semantic matching is accurate enough to surface them when needed.

7. Configure applies-to (optional)

You can restrict a guideline to specific workflows by selecting them in the Applies To field. Leave this empty for workspace-wide rules.

8. Toggle active status

Set the guideline to Active to enforce it, or Inactive to keep it saved but not enforced. Inactive guidelines are useful for seasonal rules or policies under review.

9. Save

Click Save to store the guideline. It takes effect immediately on all future agent tasks within its scope.

Tips by category

Tone guidelines

• Specify voice characteristics: formal vs. casual, active vs. passive voice.
• Set formatting standards: heading style, bullet point usage, paragraph length.
• Define what to avoid: jargon, abbreviations, certain phrases.

Data guidelines

• State which data sources are authoritative.
• Require citations or source attribution.
• Define formatting for numbers, dates, currencies, and percentages.
• Specify data freshness requirements (e.g., "Use data no older than 30 days").

Decision guidelines

• Set clear thresholds for escalation (dollar amounts, risk levels, customer tier).
• Define who or what constitutes approval.
• Specify what information to present when escalating.

Safety guidelines

• List data types that must never appear in outputs (PII, credentials, internal IDs).
• Define channels or systems that agents must never post to without approval.
• Set boundaries on what agents can modify or delete.

WARNING

Safety guidelines should always use the Always activation mode. A safety rule that only activates "when relevant" might be missed in an edge case. It is worth the small context cost to ensure critical boundaries are always in place.

How many guidelines do you need?

Start small. Three to five workspace-level guidelines covering tone, data handling, and safety are usually enough to get started. Add more as you notice patterns in agent behavior that need correction.

Too many guidelines can overwhelm the agent's context and lead to conflicting instructions. If you find yourself writing more than fifteen workspace-level guidelines, consider whether some should be scoped to specific workflows instead.

Next steps

• Creating Your First Agent — See how guidelines interact with agent configuration.
• Building a Workflow — Scope guidelines to specific workflows for workflow-specific rules.
• Using Memory — Understand how agents remember past experiences alongside guidelines.