Guide
AI Rules, Memory & Personality
Your knowledge base teaches the AI what to say. Rules, memory, and personality teach it how to behave — what it must always do, what it's allowed to remember, and how it should sound. Here's how each piece works and how to set it up.
The pieces at a glance
Rules
Short written instructions the AI must always follow in a channel — things like "Never promise a refund before checking the order" or "Always answer in English". Rules apply to every AI draft and every automatic reply, and you can switch any rule off without deleting it.
Personality
How the AI sounds. Pick a tone of voice (Professional, Friendly, Casual, or Playful), choose how long replies should run (Concise, Balanced, or Detailed), and decide whether the occasional emoji is welcome. Each channel can have its own personality.
Channel knowledge
Reusable question-and-answer pairs the AI can lean on — up to 500 per channel. Sonny can learn these automatically from clear answers your team sends, or you can add them by hand. Learned entries link back to the conversation they came from.
Customer details
Durable facts and preferences about an individual customer — "Prefers updates by email", "On the annual plan" — up to 20 per customer in each channel. They are only ever used in that customer's own conversations.
Learning from your team
When one of your teammates sends a clear, self-contained answer to a question, Sonny can save it as channel knowledge so future AI replies benefit from it. Nothing is locked in — every learned entry can be reviewed, edited, or deleted.
You stay in control
Everything the AI remembers is visible in one place. Search it, correct it, or delete it — deletions take effect immediately, and the AI stops using that information from the very next reply.
How the AI puts it together
When the AI writes a draft or answers a customer, it combines everything you've set up — in a strict order of priority, so there's never a question about what wins:
Your rules
Always apply. A rule is never outranked by anything the AI has learned or remembered.
Your knowledge base
The source of truth for facts — pricing, features, policies. If memory and the knowledge base disagree, the knowledge base wins.
Channel knowledge
Treated as helpful examples of how your team answers, never as facts that override the knowledge base.
Customer details
Used to personalise replies for that one customer — never shared between customers, and never used in the test chat.
Personality shapes the voice of every reply, but it never changes the facts — and it never outranks a rule.
Setting up rules
Open the Rules & Memory tab
Go to Channels, pick your channel, open the "AI" tab, and choose "Rules & Memory". (You'll need the AI add-on or your own key active — see the AI Copilot guide.)
Add a rule
Click "Add rule" and write one clear instruction per rule — short and specific works best. You can add up to 50 rules per channel.
Toggle, edit, or delete
Each rule has a switch, so you can pause one without losing it. Edits and deletions apply to the AI's very next reply.
Try it in the test chat
The test chat on the same page follows your rules, so you can check the effect immediately — before any customer does.
Rules that work well
- "Never promise a refund — offer to connect the customer with our team instead."
- "Always answer in the language the customer writes in."
- "Don't quote delivery times — link to the shipping page instead."
- "Address customers by first name when we know it."
Setting the personality
Open the Settings tab
On the same AI page, choose the "Settings" tab. The Personality card sits below the AI Copilot and Auto-Responder switches.
Pick a tone and length
Choose the tone of voice that fits your brand and how long replies should run. The hints under each option tell you what to expect.
Decide on emoji, then save
Flip the emoji switch if a light touch fits your brand — the AI will use at most one per reply. Click "Save changes" and both AI drafts and automatic replies pick up the new voice.
Working with memory
Review what the AI knows
In "Rules & Memory", the Memory card has two tabs: "Channel knowledge" (reusable answers) and "Customer details" (facts about individual customers). Both are searchable.
Add knowledge by hand
Click "Add knowledge" to write a question and answer yourself — useful for the questions you know are coming. Click "Add detail" on the Customer details tab to save a fact about a specific customer.
Check where an answer came from
Entries Sonny learned automatically show a "Source conversation" link so you can read the original exchange. Entries you added show an "Added manually" badge.
Manage details from the contact page too
Every contact's page has an "AI customer details" card showing what the AI remembers about them across your channels — with the same add, edit, and delete controls.
Privacy and control
Memory is useful precisely because it's not a black box. Here's what Sonny does — and refuses to do — with it:
- Channel knowledge may be reused across customers, so it's the wrong place for anything private — the app reminds you of this, and Sonny's automatic learning is designed to skip customer-specific information.
- Sonny declines to store sensitive information such as passwords, access codes, or payment details in memory — even if it appears in a conversation.
- Customer details stay with that customer. If you merge two contacts, their details move with them.
- Deleting a rule, a saved answer, or a customer detail takes effect immediately — the AI stops using it from its next reply.
- The test chat previews your rules, knowledge, and channel memory, but never uses any real customer's details.
Related docs
AI Copilot
AI drafts, automatic answers, and a knowledge base the AI learns from.
Bring Your Own Key
Run Sonny's AI on your own OpenAI, Anthropic, or self-hosted account — unlimited conversations.
Contacts
Manage your contact list with tags, merging, and auto-creation.
Billing
Understand pricing, trials, and subscription management.