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Most agents run on Popcorn’s rules: Popcorn writes and tests how the agent sells, answers and hands over, and you choose how it sounds with its Voice. What it knows comes from your Knowledge, which you keep true with the help of the Knowledge check: every night it learns from your team’s replies in chats and asks you before it adds anything (see Review what your agent learned). What the agent can do comes from the capabilities you switch on. This page explains what the rules make the agent do, how to set the Voice, and where to put the rules you used to write as instructions.

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The two agent types

Every agent has a type, chosen under Agent type on the Create agent page: “You can’t change the type after the agent is created.” To use the other type, create a new agent and move your WhatsApp numbers to it. To see an agent’s type, open its Instructions tab. An agent on Popcorn’s rules reads “Runs on Popcorn’s rules: Popcorn writes and tests how it sells, answers and hands over. You keep its Knowledge up to date.” A custom agent shows its Instructions box with Draft with agent.

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What Popcorn’s rules make the agent do

The rules are the same for every store, filled in with your business name and the agent’s Voice. When Popcorn improves them, every agent on Popcorn’s rules gets the change without you publishing anything. A store that sells products gets a sales agent; a business without products gets a support agent. The agent:
  • Replies to greetings naturally, and searches your Knowledge before answering any question about your products, services or policies, even one that looks off-topic.
  • Answers from Knowledge directly when it covers the question, even in part.
  • Never guesses about your business. When neither Knowledge nor a tool covers a point, it says it can’t confirm that point and offers to bring in your team, and hands over when the customer accepts or the request needs a person.
  • Says, for a question outside your business, that it has no details and offers help with what you do.
  • Says it is passing the customer to your team only in a reply where it actually hands over, and uses the handover when your Knowledge says to forward something to the team.
  • Says it is an AI assistant, not an employee. It does not make appointments, bookings or commitments for your business, and does not promise outcomes or give instructions your Knowledge does not contain.
  • Recommends only what can be bought now. It can answer about a product that is out of stock or not for sale (that it exists, its price, that it is not available now), but offers an available alternative instead of recommending it. Shopify products are never treated as out of stock, so this applies to them only when they are not active (see Products the agent can’t sell).
  • Asks one question at a time.
Its replies are written for a phone: the answer in the first line, which is often all the notification shows; one idea per line with a blank line before its question; WhatsApp’s own formatting used sparingly (bold for a product name, price or date, and ”- ” lines for several options); a phone number, order number, code or link on a line of its own; and caveats only when they help the customer decide, never an account of how its search went.
Keep Hand over to your team switched on (Handoff tab). Popcorn’s rules offer your team whenever Knowledge does not cover a question, and the agent can only hand over with that switch on.
What the agent can do (recommend products, take orders, track orders, hand over) still depends on the switches on its Actions and Handoff tabs; see Capabilities.

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Set the Voice

1

Open the Voice

Click Agent in the sidebar and open the agent. On the Instructions tab, Voice (“How the agent sounds to your customers.”) is below Profile.
2

Choose the settings

Pick each setting from the table below. An agent whose Voice you never changed runs with the defaults.
3

Preview the replies

Click Preview replies to hear the Voice before you save (see below).
4

Save and publish

Click Save and review, then Publish changes. The Voice is part of the agent’s version, so customers and the test chat get it only once you publish. In the publish dialog the change counts under Messaging and notification settings, and Show before and after lists it as Voice.

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Preview the Voice

The test chat answers with the published version, so it cannot show a Voice you have not published. Preview replies answers three sample customer messages in the Voice on the page: a greeting in Arabic asking about men’s perfumes and their prices, a question in Arabic about delivery to Riyadh, and a question in English about returns. “The samples don’t use your Knowledge or store data”, so the replies stay general and say the agent will check the details for the customer. Previews use no credits. After you change a setting, the preview shows You changed the voice since this preview.; click Preview again. If the preview fails you see Couldn’t preview the voice, or No sample replies came back. Try again.

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Reply language

With Same as the customer, Popcorn works out the language of each reply from the customer’s own words and tells the agent before it writes:
  • The customer’s latest message that says something decides. A greeting, a “thanks”, a link, a code or a product name on its own does not switch the language; the agent keeps the language of their earlier messages.
  • A customer who asks for a language by name (“English please”) gets it.
  • A customer who writes in another language, such as French or Urdu, gets replies in that language.
  • The words of a voice note and the caption under a photo count; a photo, sticker or tapped button does not.
  • The agent translates what it uses from your Knowledge and tool results, and keeps product names as your store writes them.
With Always Arabic or Always English, every reply is in that language, whatever the customer writes. Arabic style has no effect with Always English. An agent on custom instructions does not get this: the language of its replies follows its instructions.

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Where your rules go

An agent on Popcorn’s rules never reads instructions, so each rule you would have written has its own place:

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Agents that had their own instructions

When Popcorn’s rules became the default, agents that already existed were switched to them, apart from a few that kept custom instructions. If an agent was answering customers with its own instructions, Popcorn first saved those instructions word for word as a published Knowledge article named “Previous instructions of” followed by the agent’s name, in the agent’s Knowledge. The agent no longer reads its instructions, but finds every fact they held when it searches Knowledge. On the Knowledge page, the Knowledge check asks whether to keep each fact from it (Keep this?) and, once each has a home of its own, offers to remove it (Remove the old instructions?). You can also edit or delete it yourself, but deleting it before its facts have moved takes them away from the agent. See The old instructions article.