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Instructions are plain language. Write how you want Rootly AI to work, and it follows. Set them once and they apply to everyone on your team. Every feature starts on Rootly’s best practice set, so Rootly AI follows considered guidance before you write anything.
Incident summarization instructions in Rootly AI settings next to the Slack thread they produce

Instructions set on Incident summarization, and the Slack catch-up they shape

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Best Practice or Custom

Each Instructions box has two sources. Pick one with the tabs above the box.
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Active by default
Rootly’s own set, maintained by Rootly and updated as the product changes. Read-only, with an expandable panel under the box giving the thinking behind each rule.
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Yours to edit
Your own text. Switching to Custom copies Rootly’s set into the box as a starting point, so you edit rather than start from nothing.
Switch back to Best practice at any time. Your custom text is kept, so you can return to it.

Default Instructions

The full best practice text for every feature.

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Where the Best Practice Set Comes From

The best practice instructions are not generic AI guardrails. They are Rootly’s opinion about how AI should behave in an incident, encoded as shipped defaults. They were developed with practitioners from the resilience engineering community, the field that studies how complex systems and the people who run them cope with failure, and shaped by patterns across the millions of incidents managed in Rootly. The defaults reflect that grounding: contributing factors rather than a single root cause, evidence separated from inference, theories named as theories with owners, blameless framing that asks what people were seeing instead of why someone did something, and a clear line between what is missing from the record and what did not happen. Every rule was tested against real incidents before shipping, and each feature’s set carries an expandable Why these defaults panel in the product explaining the reasoning, so the instructions teach good incident practice while they steer the AI. You can read every set in full at Default AI Instructions.

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Setting Instructions

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Across Every Feature

1

Open AI & Agents

Go to AI & Agents → Global.
2

Switch to Custom

Select Custom above the Instructions box. Rootly’s set is copied in for you to edit.
3

Write Your Instructions

Edit the text, then click outside the box. A confirmation toast appears when it saves.
The Global page under AI and Agents, showing the Instructions box with the Best practice and Custom tabs above it

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On One Feature

1

Open the Features List

Go to AI & Agents → Features.
2

Open the Feature

Select the arrow at the end of the feature row, next to its toggle. The feature gets a page of its own.
3

Write Your Instructions

Switch to Custom, edit the text, then click outside the box.
Navigating from AI and Agents to Features to the Rootly Agent in Slack page, where the Instructions box sits under the Best practice and Custom tabs
The arrow appears only on features that accept instructions and are turned on.
One feature row lives elsewhere: Proactive features sits on AI & Agents → Global, next to the opt-in toggle, rather than in the Features list. Its arrow opens its Instructions box the same way.

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Where Instructions Apply

Instructions live in two places, both under AI & Agents. They apply together. Both are sent whenever the feature runs, and each is labeled so Rootly AI knows which is which. Where the two conflict, the feature instruction wins, because it is the more specific of the two.
Global and AI in Retrospectives instructions alongside the retrospective summary they produce

A global instruction and a retrospective instruction, and the draft that carries both

  • Global reaches every feature. Keep it to guidance that holds everywhere.
  • A feature box only reaches that feature. Write a rule out in full wherever you want it.
Instructions steer how Rootly AI writes. Anything that has to happen every time belongs in a template or a workflow.

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Which Features Accept Instructions

In the order they appear under AI & Agents → Features: Proactive features also accepts instructions, from its row on the Global page rather than this list. A feature has to be turned on before its Instructions box appears.

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Writing Your Own

Five things shape a good instruction.
Switching to Custom hands you Rootly’s set. Cut what doesn’t fit and add your own rules on top, rather than clearing the box and starting over.
Generate the output first. Add a rule for each thing you’d have changed by hand.
Rootly AI follows a positive instruction more reliably. It says what to put in, not just what to leave out.
  • ❌ “Don’t use acronyms.”
  • ✅ “Spell out any term a new responder would need to look up.”
Keep a prohibition where there’s no positive version, like banning a phrase.
A persona narrows what Rootly AI will do without improving the output. Set the scene instead. Say who’s reading and under what pressure.
  • ❌ “You are an experienced incident commander.”
  • ✅ “The reader is joining the incident now and needs to know what to do next.”
Write rules someone could grade an output against.
  • ❌ “Be clear and professional.”
  • ✅ “Keep it under 80 characters, in words a new responder would recognize.”
Treat your first version as a starting point. Your team’s feedback tells you what to change. Instructions take a moment to edit, so refine as you go.

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Instructions in Retrospectives

A retrospective block can carry three instructions at once. They live in different places.
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Account-wide
Set in AI & Agents → Features → AI in Retrospectives. Applies to every AI block in every retrospective in the account.
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One template
Set in the retrospective template builder. Applies to every AI block in that template.
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One block
Set on the block itself. Applies to that block only.
Template and block instructions combine into one field, labeled so you can see where each part came from. See Building AI Templates for the template-side fields.

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Managing Instructions

Owners and admins edit instructions. Everyone else sees them read-only, so responders can check what’s in effect. The box saves when you click outside it, and an instruction can run to 10,000 characters.

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History

Select History under the box to see every edit: who made it, when, and what changed, line by line. Switching between Best practice and Custom is recorded there too. Clearing the box empties it and stops the instruction applying. The text stays in History, so you can retrieve it. Turning a feature off leaves its instruction saved. It applies again when you turn the feature back on.

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Troubleshooting

Check that the box is set to Custom, since Best practice ignores your text while it is selected. Then check that the feature is turned on under AI & Agents → Features, and that you wrote the instruction on the feature you meant.
Long instructions are the usual cause. Cut back to the rules that describe something you’d otherwise fix by hand, then check whether the ones you kept come through more consistently.
The feature instruction wins. Rewrite one of the two so they agree, rather than relying on that.
Either the box is set to Best practice, which is read-only by design, or you aren’t an owner or admin. Switch to Custom, or ask an admin to make the change.

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Frequently Asked Questions

No. Every feature starts on Rootly’s best practice set. Switch to Custom when you want the output to match how your team already writes.
Yes. Instructions are set for the whole account, not per person.
Only the best practice set is maintained by Rootly, and it updates as the product changes. Custom text is never edited for you.
Save it and generate the output once. Adjust from what you see, not from what you expect.