UT Spark: How to Create a Personal Agent
Creating a Personal Agent
On the left toolbar of UT Spark, click on Agents and select + Create a Personal Agent.
On the bottom right of the page, a Quick Create window will pop up. Here you give it a name to start the creation process and click Let’s go, this name can be changed later!
The Create Personal Agent interface will appear, this is where you will build and save your agent’s functionality. The creation interface has the following elements:
Agent Instructions
Agent Instructions define the behavior and purpose of an agent. They set the context, outline its role, and establish how it should respond to user inputs. These instructions guide the agent’s tone, level of detail, and scope.
You can find Agent Instruction examples here: UT Spark: Tips for Creating Personal Agent Instructions , or you can ask a UT Spark agent to help you create them. This is an iterative process that should be refined and tweaked.
Knowledge Sources
Knowledge Sources are documents you upload or websites you link to give your agent more information, or specific information that you want it to pull from.
Capabilities
This refers to the agent’s ability to access the internet to search for more information.
Chat Playground
The Chat Playground is where you can quickly test your agent while tweaking the instructions or knowledge sources.
Chat Starters
Chat starters are relevant prompts that you can display to anyone using this agent. Clicking on a chat starter will send the prompt to the chat and get the conversation started. This is optional.
Agent Instructions
Agent Instructions tell your agent what it should do and how it should act. They define the agent’s role, and guide how it answers questions. A good set of instructions can shape its tone, how much detail it gives, and what topics it focuses on. Start simple, test how the agent responds, and then refine as you go, it’s normal to tweak these over time.
You can refer to the tips in UT Spark: Tips for Creating Personal Agent Instructions , or ask a UT Spark agent to help you create and improve your instructions.
The default instructions provided in UT Spark are a great place to start, they do not have to be written in markdown as shown in the editor but this can help you distinguish sections.
It may be helpful to start out broad and refine the agent instructions rather than providing it with too many constraints early in the process. This will help you learn how that agent responds to your requests.
Clear instructions work best, and setting an expectation for the agent can help it respond in the appropriate tone: “You are an agent that responds with accurate and useful information about…”
Knowledge Sources
If required, add Knowledge Sources to your agent by clicking on the + Add widget in the page. You will be presented with the option to Upload Files or link a Website.
Uploading Files
For currently accepted file types and limits see:
UT Spark: FAQs | Q: What file types can I upload?
Browse to the files or drag them into the widget on screen, the files will then upload and show their progress and click Add when this is done. You can always add more later, up to the limits outlined above.
Tip: If you are uploading documents that need OCR (Optical Character Recognition), change the interpreter to Code.
Website
You may also add websites as knowledge sources. Click on Website in the Add Knowledge Source widget.
Enter the following:
URL: Give it the URL of the website you want it to use.
Maximum Pages to use: This is the link level, or how many links below the top level page should it look at.
Note: Setting this value much larger than 5 may result in poor performance or inaccurate results. The smaller, the better.
When to use: Much like Agent Instructions, you will tell it when to use this knowledge source and provide it some context.
Capabilities
This setting tells the agent it can search the internet for results to enhance it’s answers. Toggling this on extends the capabilities beyond the underlying training, however it can result in incorrect results. Tweaking the Agent Instructions can help mitigate this.
Caution: Agents with Web Search
When this is turned on:
Your prompts (or parts of them) may be sent to external search engines to gather results.
This means data leaves UT’s secure environment during that specific interaction.
If you're working with confidential, sensitive, or unpublished information, enabling Search the Internet is not advised.
Chat Playground
Within the Chat Playground you can test your agent as you build. Once you save your agent you can edit it again any time, however once you click Create or Update on this page you will need to re-open the editor.
Chat Starters
The Chat Starters are prompt that you provide to users of your agent, this can get the conversation started however they are not required. This will appear as a button the user can click on to send the prompt, you may have up to 4 chat starters.
Saving and Editing your Agent
Once you are finished in the Create Personal Agent interface click on Create, this will save the agent and take you back to the All Agents page.
To edit the agent hover over the agent’s card and click on the ellipsis in the top right corner, and click Edit.
Additionally you may edit the agent while interacting with it by hovering over the ellipsis on the top right corner of the page to reveal the Edit option.
Sharing your Personal Agent
So to your agent and click on the ellipsis so reveal the context menu. Click on Sharing:
Chose the access method:
Private - toggles whether or not your agent is shared as a link, embed code can be used authenticated only.
Just click Save.
Anyone with a link - you can share to anyone who has a link.
Click “Copy Link” and Save then send the link to someone!