Glossary term
Glossary term
Agentic Systems
Top-level instructions that define agent behavior, role, constraints, and policies.
Anthropic's Claude customer-service deployments use system prompts specifying: role (tier-1 support), allowed actions (read order, issue refund under $50), forbidden actions (delete accounts), and escalation triggers.
Cursor AI embeds a system prompt into every coding assistant session that includes the project's coding standards, allowed libraries, security constraints, and instructions to never hardcode credentials.
A financial institution's Copilot system prompt specifies: 'You are a read-only research assistant. You may not execute trades, access client PII beyond masked IDs, or provide personalised investment advice.'