Directives: An agent that works for you

Directives are standing instructions Felix follows in your conversations: the names your team uses for things, what your terms mean, and how you want answers given.

A Directive saves you from repeating the same instruction at the start of every chat. Before each reply, Felix adds the active Directives that apply to you to its instructions, in Chat, Copilot and Background Agents. What you bring is the instruction itself, in plain language.

What Directives are for, and what they aren't for

Use a Directive for:

• an alias: a short name or abbreviation your team uses for something
• a definition: what a term means at your company
• a standing preference: how you want Felix to work or present answers every time

Use something else for:

• a metric with a formula, or a method with several steps (a Skill; when you ask Felix to remember one, it suggests a Skill)
• an instruction for one question only (say it in the chat)
• events or data Felix doesn't have a name for yet (your Quantum Metric team maps them as Business Concepts)

How Directives work

A Directive is either private or subscription-wide, and applies in all workspaces or in one.

Under Applies to workspaces, choose All workspaces or one of your workspaces. A Directive set to one workspace applies only in conversations in that workspace.

In a conversation, Felix uses:

• every active subscription-wide Directive for all workspaces
• every active subscription-wide Directive for the workspace you're in
• your own active private Directives for all workspaces or that workspace

Other people's private Directives never apply to you. Archived and pending Directives never apply.

Felix is instructed to treat subscription-wide Directives as overriding workspace ones, and workspace ones as overriding private ones. A new or edited Directive applies from your next conversation.

Directives apply in Chat, Copilot and Background Agents.

Adding and managing Directives

Open the Directives page

In the Felix menu, open More options and choose Directives. The page lists the Directives you can see and opens on the workspace you're in, showing the Directives for that workspace and those for all workspaces. Choose All my workspaces to see the rest.

Create a Directive

1. Select Create.
2. In New Directive, write the instruction in Content, up to 5,000 characters.
3. Under Who can see this, choose Private (Only active for you) or Subscription-wide (Visible and active for all users).
4. Under Applies to workspaces, choose All workspaces or one workspace.
5. Select Create Directive for a private Directive, or Suggest for team for a subscription-wide one.

A subscription-wide Directive is saved as Pending review.

Ask Felix in a conversation

You can ask Felix what Directives it's following, or ask it to remember a preference. Felix saves a preference as a private Directive for all workspaces, shown on the Directives page with the source Agent. Felix can change or delete your own private Directives when you ask, and asks you to confirm before it deletes one. It doesn't create subscription-wide Directives; use the Directives page for those.

Edit, archive and delete

Your own private Directives have a menu on their row:

• Edit changes the content, the workspace, or both.
• Archive stops the Directive applying and hides it from the list. Tick Archived to see archived Directives.
• Delete, on an archived Directive, removes it permanently after you confirm.

A subscription-wide Directive can't be edited, archived or deleted from your row menu, including one you suggested.

Find a Directive

Search matches any text in a Directive. Filter narrows the list by Status (Active, Archived, Pending review), Source (how it was created, such as Manual or Agent), Availability (Private, Workspace, Global) and Ownership.

Limitations

• The active Directives in each group share a size limit: your private Directives 2,000 characters in total, the subscription-wide Directives for one workspace 3,000, and those for all workspaces 4,000. Saving over a limit fails with "Directive would exceed the … budget"; remove or shorten existing Directives first. Because of the private limit, a single private Directive can't be longer than 2,000 characters.
• An archived Directive can't be restored. Create it again instead.
• Once you suggest a subscription-wide Directive, you can't edit or withdraw it, and you aren't notified when it's approved.
• Deleting a Directive by asking Felix is permanent; it isn't archived first.
• Directives aren't available from the Quantum Metric iOS app.

Getting started

If you have the Chat permission:

1. Open More options in the Felix menu and choose Directives.
2. Select Create and write one instruction you find yourself repeating.
3. Keep it Private and save it.
4. Start a new conversation and ask Felix which Directives it's following, to check that it's there.

Related

• Felix Agentic: start here
• Chat
• Copilot
• Background Agents
• Skills