Playbooks

Playbooks are onboarding documents for your agents. They define explicit SOPs an agent can access anytime, like resume review criteria, brand documentation guidelines, qualification rubrics, or step-by-step process guides.

Playbooks are not always placed into every prompt. Instead, they stay available as reference material the agent can pull in when a task calls for that guidance.

What to use playbooks for

These are examples, not a fixed list. Use a playbook whenever an agent needs durable guidance for a recurring situation, such as:

• Resume review: Hiring criteria, red flags, scoring rules, and summary format.
• Brand guidelines: Voice, terminology, formatting rules, and approved examples.
• Sales qualification: ICP signals, discovery questions, disqualifiers, and CRM update rules.
• Support triage: Issue categories, escalation paths, and required follow-up questions.
• Process guides: Repeatable workflows like lead research, invoice review, or partner onboarding.

Best practices

• Write a clear, step-by-step SOP for the work you want the agent to run.
• Add exact code snippets or commands when deterministic technical steps are hard to describe in prose.
• Keep playbooks short enough for a human reviewer to scan.
• Keep each playbook focused on one step, policy, or short process.
• Update the playbook when human reviewers correct the agent.

Why use a playbook instead of instructions or skills?

Use a playbook when the agent needs specific operating guidance for a recurring situation, especially company-specific SOPs, policies, rubrics, examples, or process docs for this agent.

Put broad identity, personality, tone, and always-on behavior in instructions. Put reusable, agent-agnostic capabilities like creating PPTX decks, transforming files, or following a portable technical workflow in skills.