Writing for AI features
Copy rules for the Agent and other AI-driven features, including naming, hedging, and outcome-first framing.
AI features carry a specific set of trust risks that standard copy rules don't cover: overclaiming what the system knows, describing the technology instead of the outcome, presenting output as final, and underselling the Agent with generic names. The rules on this page address each of them.
Agent status updates
When the Agent itself is the subject of a status update, name it directly rather than falling back to a generic progress label. When it completes a task, confirm what it did and point the person to what they should review.
- The Agent is reviewing your campaign brief.
- The Agent is building your segment. This usually takes a few seconds.
AI in progress
Describe what the AI is doing in plain terms. The person cares that subject lines are being generated, not that a model is running.
| Use | Instead of |
|---|---|
| Analyzing campaign history… | Running AI model… |
| Building your audience… | Machine learning in progress… |
| Generating subject lines… | AI is thinking… |
Confidence and uncertainty
AI output is always a suggestion until a person acts on it, so never present it as final or authoritative. For probabilistic recommendations, hedge with words like "likely", "based on", and "suggested". Superlatives like "optimal" and "best" promise a certainty the system doesn't have.
| Use | Instead of |
|---|---|
| Based on recent behavior, these people are likely to re-engage. | These are your best contacts for this campaign. |
| Suggested send time based on open rate patterns. | The optimal send time is 9:00 am Tuesday. |
Naming the Agent
The feature is the Agent: capitalized, and always with the article. When Customer.io speaks about its own feature, it's our Agent, also capitalized. The person's individual experience is your agent or my agent, lowercase, with the possessive. Never write "Agent" on its own, and never "AI Agent", "the bot", "the AI", or "the tool"; generic names undersell a capability that is core to the platform's value.
Surface-qualified names like "Slack Agent" are proper nouns and stay as written; don't rewrite them to "the Agent in Slack".
- Ask the Agent (the feature)
- Meet the Agent (the feature)
- Use our Agent to automate your workflows (Customer.io's feature)
- Use your agent to translate messages (the person's instance)
- Ask Agent (missing article)
- Meet Agent (missing article)
- Meet the AI (wrong name)
- Meet the AI Agent (never "AI Agent")
Outcome-first, not AI-first
Lead with what the person gets, not with the fact that AI produced it. "AI-powered" is never a descriptor; the outcome is the selling point, and the technology is a footnote at most. Copy that describes the technology reads like a press release.
| Use | Instead of |
|---|---|
| Suggested subject lines based on your previous broadcasts. | Our AI has generated these suggestions. |
| Your segment is ready. The Agent identified 1,240 high-intent profiles. | AI-powered segmentation is analyzing your data. |