How to Steer Zoë's Answers

This page has moved. The canonical home for how Zoë ingests context — the surfaces, their visibility, character limits, and when to use each — is now Context Surfaces.

Zoë uses multiple sources of context to answer questions accurately — the system prompt, skills, view and field descriptions, synonyms, and searchable values. Each source has different visibility and different character limits.

For the full reference, see Context Surfaces, which covers:

• The complete surfaces/visibility/char-limits table

• When to reach for each surface

• The description vs. zoe_description distinction with char limits per level

• How Skills fit alongside the system prompt and view/field context

• Why Memories are being retired in favor of Skills

Quick reference

The shortest version:

• Universal rules? System prompt.

• Complex, sometimes-relevant patterns? A Skill.

• Table-specific guidance? View description (user-facing) or zoe_description (agent-only).

• Field-specific guidance? Field description or zoe_description.

• What users call the field? synonyms on the field.

• What values exist in a column? searchable: true on the dimension.

See Context Surfaces for the detailed version.