Transforming reusable AI prompts into powerful custom actions in Contentstack

Introduction

It's a familiar struggle: you finally nail that perfect AI-generated response, but then find replicating that success consistently across different scenarios is both frustrating and time-consuming. While AI is supposed to streamline operations and save time, the reality often involves cycling through multiple rounds of revisions to achieve the desired quality.

That's exactly why we created custom actions. Because once you’ve crafted the perfect AI prompt that delivers spot-on results, it’s natural that you’d want to replicate that success without starting from scratch each time. Custom Actions in Contentstack allow you to capture these winning prompts, and reuse them anywhere in your content to achieve consistent results. This not only saves time, but it also improves the repeatability and quality of your AI-driven content, ensuring you spend less time tweaking and more time creating.

What are custom actions?

Custom actions in Contentstack's AI Assistant allow you to enhance your content editing process with reusable AI prompts. These prompts, configured in the AI Assistant settings, enable you to create specialized actions that can be applied to text fields within the Entry Editor, like adding keyword tags for SEO, personalizing the content of a title field, or even expanding upon that title to generate the body of a blog post.

Each custom action contains the following components:

• Custom Name: The unique identifier for the action.
• Icon: A visual icon associated with the action. You can upload your own or use an icon from our Venus 2.0 design library SVG icons, which help maintain a consistent platform look and feel.
• Prompt Text: The specific instructions or commands sent to the AI.
• Sub-prompts: Additional options within the action that allow for more detailed commands or adjustments.

These actions are particularly useful when you need to apply consistent modifications or enhancements to content, like adjusting tone, style, or formatting according to predefined standards. They’re stored and are available for use in the authoring experience in any content entry text fields, making them a powerful tool, especially when it comes to maintaining consistency in large-scale content operations.

To simplify the process, custom actions can be imported into your Contentstack account using a JSON configuration file. I know what you’re thinking—and the answer is yes! We have included those config files for each of the use cases we’ll be covering. We’ll begin by exploring a custom action that can be used to enforce a consistent brand voice across your content so that it aligns with your unique style and tone.

Custom Action #1: Enforce brand voice

After working with hundreds of iconic brands, we've learned what it takes to maintain brand relevancy and superiority amid the constant barrage of consumer content. A unique brand voice not only distinguishes you from competitors but also ensures your content resonates authentically with your audience. The challenge, however, lies in preventing your content from sounding generic, especially when AI tools are employed. Too often, AI-generated content can miss the mark—producing text that, while technically correct, lacks the nuances of your brand’s specific tone and style.

So we created an "Enforce brand voice" custom action. The prompt contains detailed instructions and brand-specific guidelines that guide the AI to ensure its outputs align with your desired brand voice such as maintaining a conversational and friendly tone, avoiding jargon, and adhering to style particulars like AP Style and e-commerce hyphenation.The config file that we’ve included for this action includes areas labeled for personalization—prompt text, tone specifics, and style guidelines—which you should adjust to reflect your org's unique voice before implementing.

JSON config file

Custom Action #2: SEO tagging with company-specific keywords

One of the misconceptions about AI in SEO is that it can autonomously optimize content with any keywords. However, this often leads to content being tagged with generic or irrelevant keywords, which doesn't help in ranking your content effectively. SEO optimization can be both expensive and time-consuming, and while many wish to rely on AI for help, there’s hesitation due to these challenges.

The "Tag with company-specific keywords" custom action is designed to address this problem. It enables a more controlled approach by directing the AI to only use pre-selected, company-specific keywords that are directly relevant to your business and audience. This controlled approach allows for more precise and effective SEO practices. The specifics of the keyword setup can be adjusted in the config file to better suit the types of content your business produces.

JSON config file

Custom Action #3: Create on-brand product descriptions

Creating accurate product descriptions that reflect your brand's voice can be challenging with AI. Unlike general content, product descriptions need precise language that aligns closely with how your brand communicates. This becomes more complex as the diversity of your product offerings increases, each requiring a different description style.

The "Create On-Brand Product Descriptions" custom action helps address this issue. It provides a framework for AI to generate descriptions that match your company's voice and style. Additionally, it includes sub-prompts that allow you to fine-tune the descriptions based on the type of product. The configuration file provided as an example includes settings for a technical services offering, a product offering, or an accelerator program. This makes it useful for handling a range of products that may cater to different audiences or needs.

JSON config file

Conclusion

For a closer look at how to leverage custom actions in Contentstack to create consistent AI content at scale, join us at the upcoming AI Custom Actions small group demo where we'll showcase custom actions live in the product. Don't miss out! Register now.

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