System prompt
The standing instruction that establishes a model's role, rules, and constraints for a task, applied ahead of and separately from the user's per-request input.
In more detail
The system prompt is the persistent framing for a model in a given task: who it is acting as, what it may and may not do, the tone, and the output rules. It sits above the individual user messages and shapes how the model responds to all of them, which makes it the main place to encode task-level policy.
Because it governs behavior across every request, the system prompt is where guardrails, formatting requirements, and scope limits belong. A well-constructed system prompt reduces the need to repeat instructions on every call and makes a step's behavior predictable.
Where this shows up at Ceven
Inside a Ceven workflow, each AI step carries the standing instructions that keep it on task, in the right format, and within scope. The customer describes the outcome; Ceven maintains the underlying system-level framing that keeps the step's behavior consistent from run to run, with the results captured in the audit trail.