Custom Agents

The Clarity Platform enables Yale faculty, staff, and sponsored students to create and manage Custom Agents at no cost.

What are Custom Agents?

Custom Agents are specialized AI chatbots you create and control within Clarity’s self-service platform. Unlike Clarity’s featured agents, Custom Agents give you the flexibility to build an AI chatbot tailored to your specific needs.

With Custom Agents, you can:

  • Specialize the focus: Tailor your agent to specific topics, audiences, or operational needs
  • Provide knowledge: Upload your own files to serve as the agent’s knowledge base
  • Define the behavior: Set the tone, response style, and behavior through the system prompt
  • Support diverse use cases: Design your agent to facilitate step-by-step problem solving, guide users through processes, or analyze documents
  • Control access: Share with specific individuals or teams at Yale

Once created, your Custom Agent appears in the “Agent” menu in Clarity alongside the featured agents and visible only to users you have granted access to.

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Custom Agent Self-Service Features & Limitations

Users with access to create and manage Custom Agents can modify and control agent settings. Please refer to the table below that outlines the features and limitations.

Functionality Supported Comment
Create up to 5 Custom Agents per user given the use case has been approved ✓ Self-service after approval of use case
Configure the name, description, welcome message and other user experience settings ✓ Custom Agent details can be set up upon agent creation
Select the AI model ✓ You can select from the public models available in Clarity 
Change the AI model after creation x To use a different AI model, a new Custom Agent must be created
Upload files as a knowledge source ✓ Available for all models. Unlimited number of files can be uploaded but the file size cannot exceed 512MB or 10,000,000 characters
Configure the system prompt ✓ Can be modified at any time
Request an API key ✓ A Custom Agent can also be used in combination with an API key. This needs to be indicated when access is requested
Grant individual user access ✓ You can manage user access for your Custom Agent
Grant user groups access  x Contact Clarity team for assistance
Configure the temperature settings x Not available in self-service

  

Students

Access to manage Custom Agents or API keys must be sponsored by a professor and their contact information included on the request form.

Request Custom Agent Access

Ready to request access? Familiarize yourself with the process of getting access to a Custom Agent.

Learn More

Custom Agent Use Case Examples

Custom Agents can be adapted to a wide range of academic and administrative functions. The following examples demonstrate how Custom Agents are being used across Yale. 

Central ITS created an agent to help staff navigate the vast resources available in a single location. These resources originate from different websites, tools, organizational charts, and various documents stored in various locations. The collated documentation serves as the agent’s knowledge source. 

The agent was designed to help ITS staff and local IT teams across Yale easily access ITS services, resources, and training. Whether to find internal ITS resources, seek information about central services, how to request access, or find which team a colleague is on and who their supervisor is. The agent also provides practical information about parking, conference rooms and equipment, or where to find the nearest printer or coffee machine. The agent saves staff time and provides links to find more information when needed.

Ensuring compliance on sponsored research projects is critical and highly complex, with federal and agency regulations running to several hundred pages. To support staff with navigating this complexity, Yale Finance is developing a self-service custom agent in Clarity which units can utilize to pre-review their submission of cost transfers, which entails the movement of expenses to or from sponsored projects. Goals of the Agent include further enhancing cost transfer submission quality, reducing re-work, saving time, and supporting staff training.

Version 1.0 of the Agent piloted with various units relied on the underlying LLM’s extensive training on federal and agency regulations supplemented by bespoke system instructions guiding the agent on several Yale-specific rules pertaining to cost transfers.  Version 2.0 of the Agent will leverage powerful new functionality in Clarity, such as equipping the Agent with knowledge sources including all relevant Yale policies, procedures, and forms.  Applying an agile, continuous improvement approach, enhancements to the Agent are identified and validated through a combination of user feedback and systematic, large-scale testing performed utilizing API access to the Agent.

A faculty member created a custom bot to help students navigate and answer direct questions about the course materials for an undergraduate course.  The agent let students search uploaded lecture transcripts, podcasts, and papers to quickly find and access relevant materials.

The Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning developed a Custom Agent with the goal of guiding users through the process of creating effective system prompts when users build their own custom agents. The system prompt is a key feature of a successful agent, yet not all users are familiar with it or how to create one. This Custom Agent is available to all users in Clarity and is a recommended resource if you are looking to create your own Custom Agent.

Non-Suitable Custom Agent Use Cases

Not all use cases are appropriate for Custom Agents and the following are examples of use cases not suitable for the Clarity platform.

Creating a Custom Agent intended for the public or non-Yale affiliated users is not appropriate, since Clarity access is limited to the Yale community.

Creating a Custom Agent that uses Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) data or any other data that is not approved for use on the Clarity platform according to Clarity Platform Security is not appropriate. Please refer to the Health Sciences website for additional information.

Creating a Custom Agent to aid with the diagnosis of a patient is not a suitable use case for Clarity. Please refer to Health Sciences AI Toolkit for additional information.

Creating a chatbot embedded within a website cannot be done through a Clarity Custom Agent, since users can only interact with the chatbot on the Clarity platform. YaleSites Beacon offers support for use cases like these, where an AI search is enabled for a YaleSites website. To learn more, visit the Beacon AI pages on the YaleSites website.

Responsibilities of Custom Agent Owners 

Users with access to managing Custom Agents are expected to take responsibility for:

  • Agent maintenance: Overall agent management 
  • Access Management: Granting and Removing user access 
  • User support: Helping your agent’s users 
  • Compliance: Following data guidelines and using the agent only for the approved use case
    •  Note that a new use case requires an additional request   
  • Annual attestation: Confirming safety and usage guidelines yearly
  • Lifecycle management: End-dating agents no longer in use
  • Contact updates: Notifying the AI Platforms Services team if you leave Yale or if primary contact of the use case changes

Support

The AI Platforms Services Team offers the following support: