Guidance

Guidance is how you tell the assistant what to do about a specific customer intent. The knowledge base gives it facts; guidance gives it procedure.

The assistant is given a list of your enabled rules - each one's name and trigger, not its instructions. Before it answers, it matches the customer's message against those triggers and reads the instructions of the rules that apply.

That means a rule only costs what it is worth: a rule about returns is not paid for in a conversation about delivery. It also means the assistant has to recognise that a rule applies, so the trigger is the part that decides whether the rule is used at all.

Creating a rule

Field	Description
Name	A short name for the intent, for example Refund Request or Shipping Inquiry.
Trigger	A description of the customer intent that should activate this rule. Write it as the range of ways a customer might raise the topic, not as a single phrase.
Instructions	The step-by-step procedure for the assistant to follow once the intent is detected.
Status	Enabled, Disabled, or Testing.

Example

Name

Where is my order

Trigger

Customer inquiries about order location, delivery status, shipping updates, tracking
information, or asking "where is my order/package/shipment." Includes questions about
delivery timing, order progress, or shipping delays.

Instructions

- Share available tracking information with customer
- Inform customer that orders generally take 7-10 business days to arrive
- IF it's been more than 10 business days since order was placed: share tracking
  information and current shipping status, escalate to agent for further assistance

Status: only Enabled reaches the assistant

Only rules with the status Enabled are offered to the assistant. Disabled rules are ignored, and today Testing is ignored in the same way - it marks a draft for your own bookkeeping, it does not route the rule to a subset of traffic. Use Preview to try a rule out: enable it, test it in the preview widget, and disable it again if it is not right.

Guidance against Instructions

There are two places to write instructions, and they do different jobs:

• Settings > AI Assistant > Instructions always applies. Put your business description, your global rules, and your prohibited topics there.
• Guidance applies only when the intent is detected. Put per-scenario procedure there.

This split matters more than it looks. A rule whose trigger says "applies to all conversations" or "whenever giving product advice" is not really conditional: the assistant has to fetch it on almost every message, which costs a step each time and gives nothing that Instructions would not. Anything you want applied always belongs in Instructions. Keeping scenario procedure out of Instructions keeps ordinary conversations shorter and cheaper - see Costs and billing.

Guidance against FAQ

Guidance is for procedure; a fact belongs in FAQ. Both are now read on demand, so the difference is no longer cost - it is what each one is for. A rule tells the assistant how to handle a situation; a FAQ entry answers a question.

A useful test - if the text tells the assistant what to do, it is a rule; if it tells the assistant what is true, it is a FAQ entry.

Writing rules that fire

• Describe the intent, not the wording. The assistant matches meaning, so listing several ways a customer might phrase the request works better than one exact sentence.
• Keep triggers distinct. Two rules whose triggers overlap heavily give the assistant no clear choice between them.
• Say in the trigger when a rule forbids a step. A rule that exists to stop the assistant doing something - not asking for an order number, not recommending a product, not escalating - is only used if the assistant recognises the situation from the trigger alone. Write "customer asks about a product they already bought, where the answer does not depend on the order" rather than leaving the prohibition in the instructions where it is read too late.
• Be explicit about escalation. If a case should end in a ticket, say so in the instructions - the assistant can create one when Mirasvit Help Desk MX is installed. See What the chatbot can do.