Understanding AI instructions in Responsive

Responsive provides multiple ways to guide AI-generated responses, allowing you to tailor content based on your organization's standards, the context of a specific project, the requirements of an individual section, or a single answer. Each of these levels serves a different purpose, helping you tailor your AI results to meet your business and customer requirements.

Note: Where instruction precedence is critical, validate the AI's behavior through testing.

Organization-level prompts

The organization-level prompt establishes general AI guidance for your Responsive instance. These instructions are intended to promote consistency across AI-generated responses throughout your organization.

Common use cases include:

• Defining your organization's writing style and tone.

• Setting branding guidelines.

• Specifying preferred English (British or American ).

• Including compliance or legal considerations.

• Instructing AI to avoid unsupported claims.

• Providing general guidance that should be broadly followed.

Examples:

• Use a professional and concise tone.

• Use British English.

• Only generate responses using approved company knowledge.

• Avoid making unsupported claims.

To set up organization-level prompting, navigate to Organization Settings > Responsive AI > Preferences > AI Instructions.

Project-level prompts

Project-level prompting allows you to provide instructions specific to an individual proposal or customer engagement. This enables you to tailor AI-generated responses based on the context of a particular customer or opportunity without changing your organization-wide guidance.

Typical use cases include:

• Customer-specific context.

• Industry-specific terminology.

• Proposal objectives.

• Formatting or word count requirements.

• Highlighting specific products or capabilities.

Example instructions:

• This proposal is for a healthcare organization. Emphasize HIPAA compliance where applicable.

• Keep responses under 200 words and highlight our AI capabilities when relevant.

How does this interact with the Organization-level prompt?

In general:

• Organization-level prompts act as broad organizational guidance.

• Project-level prompts act as project-specific guidance.

If you have overlapping or conflicting instructions between the two, the exact behavior depends on Responsive's AI implementation and the underlying language model. Testing your prompts with representative content is recommended to make sure the generated output matches your expectations.

Section-level prompts

Section-level prompts applies only to a specific section within a project. This is useful when different sections require different writing styles or subject matter expertise.

Examples include:

• Security

• Legal

• Technical

• Procurement

• HR

Example instructions (security section):

• Respond from the perspective of the Information Security team.

• Highlight encryption, identity management, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 27001 certifications where applicable.

Example instructions (technical section):

• Focus on architecture, integrations, APIs, and implementation details.

• Avoid commercial messaging.

For AI Draft, section-level instructions can override Organization-level instructions, but large language models may not always interpret conflicting instructions consistently. Testing your prompts with representative content is recommended to make sure the generated output matches your expectations.

Answer-level prompts

Answer-level prompts provide instructions for an individual response. This is the most targeted level of prompting and is useful when a specific question requires unique formatting or additional guidance.

Common use cases include:

• Limiting response length.

• Requesting bullet points.

• Including or excluding specific information.

• Tailoring a response for a specific audience.

Example instructions:

• Respond in exactly five bullet points.

• Keep the answer under 100 words and mention SOC 2 Type II.

Best Practices

To achieve consistent AI-generated responses:

• Use organization-level prompts for organization-wide standards such as tone, branding, compliance, and writing style.

• Use project-level prompts to provide customer- or proposal-specific context.

• Use section-level prompts when individual sections require specialized guidance.

• Use answer-level prompts for one-off formatting or content requirements.

Avoid providing conflicting instructions across multiple levels whenever possible. If multiple prompts address the same topic differently, AI-generated results may vary because language models interpret instructions probabilistically rather than through deterministic rules.

Test prompts using representative proposal content to validate that the generated responses align with your organization's expectations.