# Personas

> Describe the people your work affects, so an agent hears their objections to its plan before it builds anything.

This page shows you how to set up personas, so that an agent's plan is challenged by the people it affects
before any code is written. By the end you'll have written your organization's ground truth and a persona that
joins the right tickets.

A **persona** is a stakeholder your organization describes once, such as a compliance lead or an
underwriter: who they are, what they're measured on and what they'd veto. When a ticket's mission includes the
**Pressure-test with stakeholders** step, By Dawn gathers the personas that match the ticket into a **panel**
(also called a council), and each one critiques the agent's plan in character. The agent folds in what holds
up and says what it rejected.

Personas live in **Settings › Organization › Personas**. Anyone in the organization can read
them. Writing, enabling and archiving them needs an org owner or admin, because a persona shapes every plan it
reviews.

## Write the ground truth first

At the top of the page, **Ground truth — who we are** is the brief every persona reads before it answers: who
you are, who your customers are and who owns what. Until it's written, the card reads **Not written yet**, and
every persona's claims are labelled as assumptions. That's because a persona that doesn't know your business
can only guess.

Choose **Write it now** (or **Edit** once it exists), write a few plain paragraphs, and choose **Save**.

## Add a persona

1. Choose **Add persona** under **Persona library**. It opens the **New persona** form.

2. Give it a **Name**, such as "Compliance & QC". By Dawn derives the persona's key from the name, so the name
   needs at least one letter or number, and no two personas in the organization can share a key.

3. Write its **Character**: who this person is, what they're measured on and what they'd veto. This is the only
   text the persona speaks from, so write it in their voice.

4. Under **Ground — the areas they own**, list the areas this person cares about, separated by commas. These
   are matched against a ticket's labels, so use the label names your team puts on tickets, such as
   `disclosures, pricing`. Leave it empty and the persona never joins a panel on its own.

5. Turn on **Gate seat — its veto is surfaced, never smoothed over** if this person's veto matters. A gate
   seat's objection reaches you as it is, and gate seats sit first on the panel.

6. Choose **Save persona**.

**Advanced targeting** holds rarer ways to decide when a persona joins: **Repositories** (repo names),
**Diff globs** (file patterns that bring the persona in once the change is known), **Requires capability**,
and **Common — also joins on the Standard preset**. Most personas only need the ground.

## When a persona joins a panel

Each row in the library says in plain words when that persona joins, for example "Joins a panel when a ticket
touches disclosures or pricing, added automatically with a note saying why." A panel holds at most six
personas: gate seats first, then the rest in library order, and the note on the last seat says how many were
left out.

The panel is fixed when a ticket's mission starts. Editing, disabling or archiving a persona later never
changes a ticket that's already under way, so a review in progress can't shift under you.

When the personas disagree with the plan, By Dawn stops at a checkpoint and asks you: **Your stakeholders
disagree. Which way does the plan go?** You choose **Proceed as planned**, **Amend the plan** or **Send it
back**. See [Checkpoints and debriefs](https://docs.bydawn.com/mission-checkpoints/) for how to answer one.

## Manage personas

Each persona's menu has:

- **View details**: its character and **Where they look**, the product areas it's grounded in.
- **Edit configuration (advanced)**: the same form as **Add persona**.
- **Disable — take it off every panel** and **Enable — let it sit on panels again**. A disabled persona reads
  **Disabled** and keeps its settings.
- **Archive**: retire it for good. Tickets that already had it on their panel keep showing its name.

A persona marked **Locked by organization** always sits on the panels it targets, and nobody can opt a ticket
out of it. You can still enable, disable or archive it, but not edit it.

## FAQ

**Why didn't any persona review my ticket?**

Either the ticket's mission doesn't include **Pressure-test with stakeholders**, or no enabled persona's
ground matches the ticket's labels. Add the label to the ticket before it starts, or tick the step in the
mission picker. See [Missions and templates](https://docs.bydawn.com/missions/) for how a ticket's steps are chosen.

**Can a project have its own personas?**

Not yet. Personas belong to the organization, and every project draws on the same library.

**Is Refine in conversation available?**

Not yet. It shows as **coming soon** in the persona's menu. Use **Edit configuration (advanced)** for now.

## Where to go next

- [Missions and templates](https://docs.bydawn.com/missions/): which steps a ticket runs, including the stakeholder pressure-test.
- [Checkpoints and debriefs](https://docs.bydawn.com/mission-checkpoints/): answering By Dawn when it stops to ask you.

Source: https://docs.bydawn.com/personas/