# Chat personas

A persona is an **intent** you can pick in the AI chat — for example "Overview", "Plan a
feature" or "Track a problem". It doesn't change what the chat can access, but **how** it
answers: with which focus, tone and level of detail.

## What a persona does

Each persona has two parts: a **display name** (the label shown in the chat's picker) and a
**prompt fragment** — text handed to the AI assistant on top of its fixed core behaviour. The
prompt fragment steers the answers without a member having to configure anything technical. You
maintain both per language.

## Global templates and your own personas

Lalabase ships a set of **global templates** that apply to every organisation. You can't edit
or delete these templates here — they are maintained centrally. Instead, **Create override**
adds your **own** persona under the same key; it takes precedence for your organisation and
replaces the template. In the list, an **Override** marker flags exactly these cases.

## Creating your own persona

Use the plus to add a new persona: a unique **key**, a **position** (order in the picker), plus
a **label** and **prompt fragment** per language. At least one label and one prompt fragment
must be filled in, otherwise it would sit as a useless entry in the menu. There is exactly one
exception, see below.

## The neutral persona

A persona with the key `neutral` may leave its prompt fragment empty. It is the only one allowed
to, and the emptiness is the point: picking it gives you an answer with no added direction. The
chat then works from its core behaviour and your style settings alone. It still needs a label,
or the menu would show a row with no name.

Not to be confused with **Organisation default** in the assistant's gear. That is not a choice
but the absence of one, and the default persona applies. **Neutral** is a deliberate choice, and
it switches the direction off.

You may put something in it later, for example a request to take no particular direction. It is
then no longer an empty persona but one asking for neutrality, and the AI gets an instruction
again. That is not the same thing.

<div class="docs-callout docs-callout--info">
  <div class="docs-callout__title">When a persona goes away</div>
  <p>Chats that used this persona are kept: they automatically fall back to the default persona ("Overview"). This default persona is always present and cannot be deleted. The same holds when you deactivate a persona or replace a global template with an override: it stops taking effect at once, including in conversations that had pinned it, and nobody has to pick again.</p>
</div>

Only account administrators manage chat personas; every member picks one **in the personal
assistant**, under the gear in the panel header (it is called **focus** there). The choice
is yours and applies to all your conversations in this organisation until you change it.
See [Personal assistant](https://lalabase.com/docs/en/guides/ai/assistant).

Older conversations may still pin a persona of their own, chosen back when they were
started.

If a conversation pins a persona of its own, that one wins. Otherwise your choice from the
assistant applies, and if you made none, the organisation's default persona does.