The Instructions section allows you to teach your assistant how you work, what you care about, and how you want tasks performed.
To access Instructions, navigate to: app.openassistant.us/instructions
Instructions helps your assistant make better decisions, provide more personalized responses, and complete tasks in a way that reflects your preferences.
How Instructions Works
Your assistant learns in two ways:
Assistant-Learned Instructions
As you interact with your assistant, it automatically creates memories about your preferences, habits, and working style. For example, if you tell your assistant:
"I don't like meetings on Friday afternoons."
"Keep emails short and direct."
"Always include action items in meeting summaries."
"I prefer window seats when traveling."
Your assistant may remember those preferences and apply them in future tasks.
Over time, your assistant builds a better understanding of how you like to work.
User-Provided Instructions
You can also proactively provide instructions and preferences. This is useful when there are things you already know you want your assistant to remember.
Rather than waiting for the assistant to learn through experience, you can define preferences up front.
Categorizing Instructions
When you provide instructions, you have the ability to categorize that instruction, depending on where it should be applied. You should always categorize instructions, correctly, as this will greatly help the assistant work smarter and more efficiently.
You can put instructions in the following categories, and each will have several subcategories as well:
General – Instructions that should apply broadly across many conversations and tasks.
About You – Personal preferences, habits, or information the assistant should remember about you.
Contacts – Instructions that only apply when interacting with a specific person or contact.
Company – Instructions when interacting with a specific company.
Work – Instructions that apply to a type of work or activity, such as scheduling, research, writing, CRM, reminders, or communications.
Connections – Instructions that apply when using a specific connected app or service (such as Gmail, Slack, Google Calendar, or Salesforce).
Dates & Events – Instructions that only apply to a specific meeting, trip, project, deadline, or event.
Recurring Tasks – Instructions for workflows or tasks that should be repeated on an ongoing basis.
Files – Instructions that only apply when working with a specific document, spreadsheet, presentation, or other file.
Building a Better Assistant Over Time
You do not need to capture every preference immediately. Many users start with a handful of instructions and allow the assistant to learn over time. As you work together, you can:
Add new instructions
Update existing instructions
Remove outdated preferences
Refine task-specific guidance
The combination of your instructions and the assistant's learned memories creates a personalized assistant that becomes more useful over time.
Best Practices
To get the most value from Instructions:
Add instructions that reflect how you actually work.
Focus on recurring preferences and workflows.
Create task-specific guidance for work you do frequently.
Update instructions when your preferences change.
Review instructions previously to remove ones that are not relevant or are outdated.
Think of Instructions as onboarding for your assistant. The more context you provide, the better it can represent your preferences, make decisions, and complete work the way you would.