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Refining Your Coach

The Refine Coach tab is where you shape how your coach actually behaves. Instead of editing a long system prompt by hand, you work in two clearly-separated modes — Preview (chat with your coach exactly as a subscriber would) and Tune (tell it how to change). Every change is reversible.

You will find it under Build → My Coach → Refine Coach in the sidebar.

Two modes: Preview and Tune​

At the top of the tab is a Preview / Tune toggle. It is always obvious which one you are in — the active mode is highlighted and tinted (Preview is blue, Tune is amber).

  • Preview — Chat with your coach exactly as a subscriber would. It answers in character and draws on your uploaded knowledge files, so this is a faithful preview of what your subscribers actually experience. Nothing you do in Preview changes your coach.
  • Tune — Tell your coach how to behave ("be more direct", "stop opening with a question", "always recommend a 10-minute walk before journalling"). Each instruction becomes a single saved rule, and you get a change card describing exactly what changed.

The two modes keep separate conversations. Switch between them any time — your Preview chat and your Tune chat are each remembered independently, so you never lose your place.

tip

You can talk to your coach with your voice too — press the microphone icon to start a voice conversation.

Preview uses your knowledge​

Any documents you have added under Coach Knowledge are used in Preview, exactly as the live coach uses them. Ask about a topic covered in your uploads and the coach will draw on that material.

note

Your coach works from the ideas inside your documents, not their filenames. Asking "do you have the People Analyser PDF?" won't get a yes/no — instead, ask about what's in the document (for example, "how do I tell if someone is the right fit for a role?") and the coach will use it.

Teach from this​

While you are in Preview, if a reply is not quite right, hover over it and press Teach from this. That carries the reply straight over to Tune with the context filled in, so you can teach a change without losing your train of thought — the test → fix → test loop, kept intact.

Quick actions​

When a conversation is empty you will see starter chips. They differ by mode:

  • Preview — Ask for advice, Where do I start?, Walk me through it
  • Tune — Be more direct, Add a signature phrase, Change the opening question, Add a topic to avoid

Tap any chip to drop the prompt into the message box, then send it as-is or tweak first.

What your coach knows​

Press the What your coach knows button in the header to open a side panel showing every behaviour rule your coach currently follows, grouped by section:

  • Role — Who the coach is and who it helps
  • Style — Tone, pace, formality
  • Signature phrases — Verbatim lines kept word-for-word
  • Behaviours — Specific things the coach does
  • Avoid — Things the coach should not do
  • Frameworks — Approaches or models the coach uses
  • Opening — How the coach starts a fresh conversation

Each rule is a single plain-English sentence. Hover any rule to see when it was added; press the trash icon next to it to remove that rule directly without chatting.

note

Your coach must always keep at least one Role rule. If you try to delete the last one, the system blocks it and tells you to teach a new role rule first.

Change cards​

Every edit you make in Tune produces a change card inline in the chat — a small block under your message that summarises what changed. Press Show what changed to see the before/after, or Undo to roll back that single edit.

If something goes wrong (or you change your mind two edits later), use the Earlier versions button in the header to see every snapshot of your coach's behaviour with a timestamp. Press Restore this version to roll your coach back to any earlier state.

Editing a specific response​

In Tune, if the coach gives a reply you do not like, hover over its message and click the small pencil icon that appears. A box opens where you can type what you would prefer instead. When you send the correction, the system:

  1. Adds a rule covering what you want the coach to do
  2. Adds the rejected pattern to the Avoid section

This is the fastest way to turn a single bad answer into a permanent behaviour fix.

Reset​

Each mode has its own reset button — Reset preview clears the Preview chat, Reset tune clears the Tune chat. Resetting a chat only wipes that transcript; it does not undo any behaviour changes — those persist until you undo them or restore an earlier version.

Persistence​

If you navigate to another dashboard tab and back, both conversations are still there. Each mode's transcript is saved per-coach in your browser, and only that mode's reset button clears it.

Scope​

Tune is for behaviour only. If you ask it to change the title, description, image, price, voice, or knowledge base, it will politely refuse and point you to the right section of the Build dashboard:

  • Title, description, image → Coach details
  • Price → Sell seats (Marketplace Listing tab)
  • Voice → Coach details → voice
  • Knowledge files → Coach knowledge

What this replaces​

If you have used the dashboard before, Refine Coach sits where Test Coach used to be, and it now does both jobs in one place: Preview is the faithful "chat as a subscriber" test (no impact on analytics), and Tune lets you actually change how your coach behaves without writing a system prompt by hand.

Your existing coach instructions are imported automatically the first time you open the Refine Coach tab. You will see a brief "Importing your existing coach setup…" message in the side panel — that takes a few seconds and only happens once.

Tips​

  • Talk normally. "I want my coach to always recommend a 10-minute walk before journalling" works just as well as a formal rule.
  • Keep rules surgical. One rule per sentence. The system will refuse if a rule becomes too long.
  • Use Signature phrases for anything verbatim. Metaphors, sign-off lines, or favourite turns of phrase live in this section and are preserved word-for-word.
  • Preview after every change. After tuning, flip to Preview and ask a sample subscriber-style question to check the new behaviour landed how you wanted.
  • Earlier versions is your safety net. You can never lose a working version of your coach — every change is snapshotted.