This article provides best practices for optimizing and creating effective prompts for Solink's Sidekick AI.

Creating effective prompts is key to receiving valuable responses from Solink's AI so that it can directly assist with your business operations.

You can even think of the AI as an additional employee - capable of understanding your questions, monitoring your cameras and returning with clear responses to help you solve problems you and your employees do not typically have time for.

Sidekick AI features currently include:

It is highly recommended to personalize Sidekick to your business needs before creating prompts.

We can personalize the AI on our end - contact your Solink Customer Success Representative and share the following information to optimize Sidekick AI to your needs:

This data helps us shape your AI experience to best fit your needs.

Creating an effective prompt for Sidekick AI makes a huge difference in the quality of the response you will receive.

To create an effective prompt, consider the following:

Imagine a "persona" related to the goal you are trying to achieve from the AI.

Think about your goal and imagine a real person who might be the best person to achieve that goal, then instruct the AI to "think" like this ideal person.

For example, if you want the AI to check your cameras for dirty tables in a restaurant, you can start your prompt with text such as the following:

"You are a busboy who relies on clean tables for serving customers."

Be specific in what you are asking to look for - the more detail provided the better.

Provide examples to further focus in on what you're looking for. Continuing with the example in step 1, you could ask Sidekick to scan the restaurant cameras for tables that are both vacant and dirty.

You can further define or narrow down the subject of your AI prompt with specific language - for example, providing a clearer definition of the kinds of tables you want the AI to scan.

In this case, you could say:

"Note that tables always have chairs beside them. Do not include wastebins, garbage cans, etc. with clutter on top."

Consider writing the prompt as a series of steps in a sequential order.

For example, you could write:

Describe the way you would like Sidekick to respond to your prompt to ensure a clear and effective response. For example, you could tell Sidekick to respond in the following format:

AI responses are not always consistent, so ensure to write an effective response format to give predictability to your answers.

When it is all put together, your prompt may look something like this:

"You are a busboy who relies on clean tables for serving customers. I want you to:

Note that tables always have chairs beside them. Do not include wastebins, garbage cans, etc. with clutter on top.
​
​Respond with: Table Dirty = Yes/No"

The following table provides a list of example prompts you can create for Scheduled Spot Checks, based on various goals you may have depending on the industry you operate in.