Agent Prompting Guide

Getting the Best Results From the AI Agent

Oncord's AI Agent can handle everything from quick questions to multi-step tasks across your website, contacts, and marketing. It's forgiving of vague instructions, but a little technique goes a long way. This article covers the habits that consistently produce better results.

Understanding the Context Window

Every AI model works within a "context window". Think of it as the agent's short-term memory: everything in your current conversation (your messages, its replies, files you've uploaded, and the results of work it has done) has to fit inside it.

Two things follow from this:

• Early details can fade. In a very long conversation, instructions you gave near the start carry less weight than recent ones. If the agent seems to have "forgotten" something you said earlier, that's usually why.
• Focus beats volume. A conversation packed with three unrelated tasks gives the agent a lot of irrelevant material to sift through. Results tend to get slower and less accurate as a conversation grows.

In a long conversation, the agent keeps a compressed summary of its earlier work rather than every detail. If you're returning to something from much earlier, like a draft it wrote or content you pasted in, re-paste it or ask the agent to look at the page again, rather than saying "the paragraph from before".

You don't need to manage this precisely. Just know that shorter, focused conversations work better than one long thread.

Start a New Chat for Each New Task

When you move on to something new, click New Conversation rather than continuing in the same thread.

A fresh conversation gives the agent a clean slate, so it isn't second-guessing whether your new request relates to the previous one. Your old conversations aren't lost; you can revisit them any time from the conversation history.

A good rule of thumb: if you'd describe it as a different job ("now I want to update the pricing page" after an hour of working on an email campaign), you should start a new conversation.

Be Specific

The agent handles vague instructions and screenshots surprisingly well. But the more specific your request, the better the result, because you're removing guesswork.

Compare:

"Make the homepage better."

"On the homepage, rewrite the opening paragraph to focus on our bookkeeping services for tradies, and make the call to action button say 'Book a Free Consultation'."

The second prompt is more effective becase it describes what better means to you in this context. The more specific the prompt, the more likely it is to get the results you want on the first try.

Useful details to include:

• Where - which page, which contact group, which campaign
• What - the specific change, in plain language
• Why - the goal behind the change ("we're targeting first-time visitors") helps the agent make good judgement calls on the details you didn't specify
• Constraints - anything that must not change ("keep the existing headline", "don't email anyone")

For style changes like fonts and colours, say whether you mean just this page or your whole website. Site-wide styles live in your Design, so "change the heading font" is ambiguous. If you don't specify, the agent will ask before changing anything, but saying "site-wide" or "just on this page" saves a step.

Not Sure What You Want? Ask the Agent to Interview You

Sometimes you know something needs to change but can't articulate exactly what. Rather than writing a vague prompt, ask the agent to prompt you with questions:

"I want to improve our services page but I'm not sure where to start. Ask me a few questions to work out what would help most, then suggest a plan."

The agent will interview you briefly, then act on your answers. This works well for bigger jobs like restructuring a page, planning an email sequence, or cleaning up your contact database. A few questions up front usually saves several rounds of revisions later.

Show, Don't Just Describe

The agent can see what you can see:

• Select an element. Click the "Select an element" button and click the part of the page you mean. "Make this button green" is far clearer when the agent knows exactly which button "this" is.
• Upload a screenshot. If you've seen a layout you like, or you're trying to describe a visual problem, a screenshot beats three paragraphs of description.
• Paste an example. Writing an email and want a particular tone? Paste in an example of writing you like and ask the agent to match it.
• Upload a mockup. If you have a design mockup or a screenshot of a layout, upload it and ask the agent to build it. A short instruction like "recreate this as my page" is enough; it can see the image.
• Point at a live page. While editing a page or email, you can give the agent a URL and ask it to recreate that page's content in Oncord.

A note on files: images and PDFs are read visually, and text or CSV files can be read and processed. Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx and .xls) can't be read directly, so export to CSV first. This matters most for bulk jobs like "import these contacts from my spreadsheet".

Review Before You Approve

Before making bulk changes, the agent shows you exactly which records will be affected and waits for your approval. Take that moment seriously, especially for changes to contacts or live pages. It's much easier to catch "this will update 400 contacts" before clicking approve than to unwind it afterwards.

For anything you're unsure about, ask the agent to do one example first:

"Update just one product as a test, and show me the result before doing the rest."

Treat It Like a Conversation

The first result doesn't have to be the final one. If something isn't right, say so, plainly:

"That's close, but the tone is too formal. Make it friendlier, and shorten the second paragraph."

The agent remembers what it just did, so feedback like "shorter", "less salesy", or "try a version aimed at existing customers" works exactly the way it would with a colleague.

Quick Reference

Habit	Why it helps
New chat for each new task	Keeps the agent's short-term memory focused
Be specific about where, what, and why	Removes guesswork
Ask it to interview you	Extracts requirements you hadn't articulated
Select elements and upload screenshots	Shows the agent exactly what you mean
Say "just this page" or "site-wide" for style changes	Skips a clarifying question
Export spreadsheets to CSV before uploading	Excel files can't be read directly
Re-paste old content instead of referring back	Long conversations keep a summary, not every detail
Ask for a plan before big jobs	Lets you steer before work begins
Test on one record before bulk changes	Catches problems while they're small
Give plain feedback and iterate	The first draft is a starting point, not the finish