Creating and Managing AI Prompts

AI Prompts are at the core of many AI-powered features in Membrain, including AI Summarize and AI Autofill. These prompts define how the AI behaves, what information it uses, and how it communicates—allowing your team to generate consistent, high-quality content aligned with your sales process.

This article explains how to access, create, and configure AI Prompts so they fit your workflow and use case.

Accessing the AI Prompts List

AI Prompts can be managed from System Setup. The list view shows all existing prompts in your system and provides tools for filtering, sorting, and organizing them. You can filter by availability (such as active or archived), visibility, or creator. You can also group and sort the list based on different properties.

To search for a specific prompt, use the search bar in the top right corner or press F on your keyboard. You’ll also see an option to manage prompt categories, which can help organize your prompts by purpose, team, or function.

To create a new prompt, click the New button in the top right.

Creating a New AI Prompt

When creating a new prompt, you'll be asked to define several key fields that guide how the AI behaves and who can access it.

Each prompt needs a clear Name so it's easy to identify later. Next to the name, you can assign it to an existing Prompt Category, or create a new one if you have the appropriate permissions. Categories help keep prompts organized, especially as the number of available prompts grows.

The Available To setting determines who can view or edit the prompt. You can limit access to yourself, specific users, teams, permission groups, or open it to everyone. This ensures that prompts are only visible to the people who need them.

The heart of each prompt is the Prompt Text field. This is where you define what the AI should generate or do. You can personalize the prompt by clicking Insert Property, which allows you to include project details, stakeholder data, or sender/recipient information. These dynamic properties make your prompt adaptable and contextually aware, especially for use cases like emails or summaries.

Defining the Data to Include

In the Data to Include tab, you can specify what project information the AI should have access to when generating results. Including the right data improves the accuracy, relevance, and usefulness of the AI output.

You can start by enabling Process Information, which gives the AI context like project type, process name, current stage, step names, and relevant dates. This helps the AI understand where the project sits in the sales cycle.

Next, you can include Fields with Values. These are custom fields from the project that you want the AI to consider. You can also set a Max Value Age to limit how recent the data must be. For example, you might include only fields updated within the past 30 days to ensure relevance. Be selective here—too much unrelated data can reduce the quality of the results.

The Stakeholders section lets you add names, roles, titles, influence, and notes for specific stakeholder roles. This is particularly useful when the AI needs to reflect interpersonal dynamics or prepare summaries that consider stakeholder engagement.

Under Activities, you can include historical actions like meetings, calls, or tasks. Choose which activity types to include, and set a Max Activity Age to define how far back the AI should look. This can be helpful when generating summaries or identifying patterns across a project timeline.

The Messaging Center option allows you to pull in strategic messaging elements like your value proposition, sales methodology, ideal customer profile, and tone of voice. This helps ensure that AI outputs align with your company’s language and approach.

You can add data from the Content Hub. This allows the AI to reference specific content cards that support your sales process. Note that this applies only to content cards, not documents like PDFs or other attachments.

Finally, if Web Search is enabled, the AI can also enrich its response with relevant external information from trusted online sources, which is especially useful when preparing prospecting messages or researching unfamiliar companies or industries.

Best Practices for Writing Effective Prompts

A well-written AI Prompt produces better, more relevant output. While Membrain AI will do its best with any prompt, the following tips can help you get more consistent, high-quality results.

• Be clear and specific.
  Start with what you want the AI to do. If you're asking it to write a message, summarize information, or identify key details, state that directly in the prompt. Vague instructions often lead to vague results.
• Include context where needed.
  Mention the audience, tone, or format if those are important. For example, instead of saying “Write a follow-up,” try “Write a concise follow-up email to a decision-maker after a first meeting, using a professional and friendly tone.”
• Avoid overloading the prompt.
  While it's tempting to include as much detail as possible, too much information can confuse the output. Include only the data that’s relevant to the prompt’s purpose.
• Use personalizations thoughtfully.
  Properties like contact name, company, or recent activity help the AI tailor responses. But make sure they add value to the result. Irrelevant personalizations can make the prompt less effective.
• Specify the desired outcome.
  Clearly describe what a successful result looks like. If you need bullet points, a short paragraph, a summary under 150 words, or action-oriented recommendations, state that directly. Defining the expected structure and level of detail helps the AI deliver output that requires less editing and better fits your intended use.

• Test and refine.
  If a prompt isn’t producing the results you want, tweak the wording or reduce the complexity. A small adjustment can significantly improve output quality.

Where Prompts Can Be Used

Once your prompt is created, you can define where it should be available in the platform. Membrain AI Prompts can be enabled for several use cases, depending on your needs:

• Text Editing: Makes the prompt available in activity notes and other text fields.

• Email Composer: Allows users to use the prompt when drafting emails.

• Ask AI: The prompt becomes available inside Ask AI within a Project. This allows users to run the prompt on demand using the current project’s context and included data.

• Project Summary: Enables the prompt to generate summaries of project progress.

• Automations: Makes the prompt available in AI Prompt Steps and Autofill Automations.

If you’re setting up AI Autofill specifically, refer to the Autofill Automation article for more detailed guidance.

Final Notes

AI Prompts allow you to customize how Membrain AI behaves and communicates across your sales process. By carefully selecting the data to include and configuring prompt settings, you ensure that AI-generated content is both relevant and on-brand.

If you're unsure how best to structure a prompt or decide what information to include, reach out to your Membrain administrator or contact our support team at support@membrain.com.