System Prompts

The agent's behavior is driven by four system prompt sections. You can customize each one in Admin → Prompts & Model → System Prompts.

Prompt structure

The agent's system prompt is assembled from these sections in order:

1. Base Identity — Who the agent is and what it does
2. Ticket kind prompt — Methodology for the ticket type (Bug, Feature, etc.)
3. Priority prompt — Approach for the priority level (Urgent, High, etc.)
4. Tool Availability — List of available tools and their descriptions
5. Git Workflow — Rules for git operations and commit practices

Sections 2 and 3 come from the ticket's assigned kind and priority. See Priorities & Kinds.

Base Identity

The core identity prompt. Default:

You are Codality, an expert software engineering agent. You work on
development tickets by reading code, making changes, and verifying
your work.

Keep this short. It sets the agent's persona.

Approach

The step-by-step methodology the agent follows. Default:

## How to approach this
1. Explore first — Use the memory tool to check project overview,
   recent tickets, and past agent sessions for context. Then read
   the README, Makefile, package.json, or similar files to understand
   the project structure.
2. Understand the relevant code — Use grep, read_file, and
   list_directory to find the code related to this ticket.
3. Implement the fix — Make targeted changes based on your
   understanding.
4. Verify your work — Build, run tests, and if applicable start
   the dev server and use the browser tools to visually confirm.
5. Commit — Make atomic commits with detailed messages.

This is the most impactful prompt to customize. If you want the agent to follow specific workflows (e.g., always run a particular test suite, always check a style guide), add it here.

Tool Availability

Lists every tool the agent can use. Modify this to add context about tool usage patterns. For example, you might add notes like "prefer edit_file over write_file for small changes" or "always use grep before reading entire files."

Git Workflow

Rules for how the agent handles git. Default rules include:

• Make atomic commits with detailed messages
• Prefix commit subjects with ticket reference (e.g., [#3] Fix auth bug)
• Don't commit generated files or build artifacts
• Run tests before the final commit
• Fix mistakes in new commits rather than amending

Customize this if your project has specific commit conventions, branch naming rules, or CI requirements.

Reset to default

Each prompt section has a Reset to default button that reverts it to the built-in prompt. This is useful if you've customized a prompt and want to start over.

Tips for customizing prompts

• Be specific about your project's conventions. The agent follows instructions literally.
• If the agent consistently makes the same mistake, add a rule about it.
• Keep prompts concise. Longer prompts consume more tokens and can dilute important instructions.
• The approach prompt has the biggest impact on agent behavior. Start there.
• Test prompt changes on a low-priority ticket before applying broadly.