Agent Persona Drift

The Problem

Agent's personality, tone, or behavior changes inconsistently across conversations or over time, confusing users and reducing trust.

Symptoms

  • ❌ Sometimes formal, sometimes casual

  • ❌ Changes tone mid-conversation

  • ❌ Inconsistent level of technical detail

  • ❌ Persona changes between sessions

  • ❌ Cannot maintain role (e.g., "helpful engineer")

Real-World Example

Turn 1:
User: "How does OAuth work?"
Agent: "OAuth is an authorization framework that enables..."
→ Technical, formal tone

Turn 2:
User: "What about rate limits?"
Agent: "Yo! So basically you can make 1000 calls per hour, pretty sweet right?"
→ Casual, inconsistent tone change

User confused: Why the persona shift?

Deep Technical Analysis

Persona Definition

System Prompt Role:

Persona Attributes:

Drift Causes

Model Temperature:

Conversation Length:

User Influence:

Consistency Enforcement

Persona Reinforcement:

Response Filtering:

Template Responses:

Multi-Agent Consistency

Same Persona Across Agents:

Session Persistence:

Measuring Consistency

Tone Analysis:


How to Solve

Define explicit persona in system prompt (tone, expertise, detail level) + use low temperature (0.2-0.4) for consistency + reinforce persona every 5-10 turns + implement tone analysis and filter inappropriate responses + use template responses for common interactions + track persona consistency metrics (tone variance) + test persona stability across long conversations + allow users to adjust persona (e.g., "more technical" or "simpler language"). See Persona Consistency.

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