Every district has its own expectations: how staff should talk with students, which topics need care, which context matters locally. Custom Instructions let you set that guidance once, at the district level, instead of relying on every teacher to know and apply it individually.
Looking for standards alignment instead? See "Set Your District's Preferred Standards."
Who can set this up
A change here affects everyone in your organization, so access is deliberately limited to your district’s administrators.
Setup is part of your back-to-school kickoff with your CSM, who will help you identify the right person and walk you through your first configuration. Custom Instructions is part of Scale — your CSM can confirm what your organization has.
Where to find it: Click your avatar in the bottom-left corner and select Organization from the menu. “Custom instructions” is the first section on that page.
What custom instructions do
You determine your district's guidance for how AI should behave and SchoolAI applies it across Dot, Assistants, Spaces, and Tools — everywhere staff and students are working with AI.
If your district currently asks teachers to paste the same guidance into every Space they build, this replaces that entirely.
Your rules add to SchoolAI's safety — they never replace it
Before writing your guidelines, remember:
SchoolAI's built-in safety guardrails always apply. Custom instructions add to these — they never replace them:
Age-appropriate content filtering
Real-time safety monitoring with educator alerts
Privacy protections aligned with FERPA, COPPA, and state law
Your district's instructions can make things stricter, add district context, and shape tone and emphasis, but they cannot loosen, bypass, or override built-in safety.
Precedence works like this: platform safety → district → school. A school can be stricter than the district. Nothing can be looser than platform safety.
How to set your instructions
Open “Organization” settings and find “Custom instructions.”
Write your district's guidance in the field, up to 1,500 characters. A counter under the field shows how much you've used.
Read the scope line above the field, for example "Applies to Riverside Unified and 10 child organizations — in Dot, Assistants, Spaces, and Tools." It tells you exactly what you're affecting.
Click Save.
You'll see a Custom instructions saved confirmation, the badge changes from “No policy set” to “Policy set,” and the section records when instructions were last updated and by whom.
How to write instructions that actually work
Think of this as a staff handbook entry, not a prompt. Specific and concrete instructions are followed reliably; vague ones are not.
Works well:
"Use formal address with students. Do not use slang."
"Our district uses restorative practices. When a student describes a conflict, guide them toward reflection rather than assigning blame."
"Do not provide medical, legal, or mental health advice. Direct students to a school counselor instead."
"Align examples to our community context: {describe it briefly}."
Works poorly:
"Be appropriate." — Too vague to act on.
A copy-paste of your entire acceptable use policy. — Too long to be followed consistently. Extract the rules that change AI behavior.
"Ignore previous instructions." — Will be rejected. See below.
Keep it focused. A short, specific set of rules outperforms a long document.
What happens when you save
Every submission is reviewed before it goes live:
A usability check. Placeholder text and gibberish are rejected, so a half-finished draft can't accidentally go live. Clearing the field is always allowed if you want to remove your instructions.
A safety review. Your instructions are checked against SchoolAI's built-in guardrails for anything that would bypass safety protections, manipulate the model, direct students off-platform, collect student information, or produce harmful content.
If something is rejected you'll see "Couldn't save — please revise the guidance below" and a specific reason under the field, naming the category of concern; for example "Harm to students: instructs the assistant to teach bomb-making, which is dangerous, illegal, and age-inappropriate." Adjust and resubmit.
Inheritance
Instructions are set at your top-level organization and inherited by the schools and organizations beneath it.
What Custom Instructions can help you do
Apply your district's AI use policy without asking every teacher to remember it
Set tone and formality expectations consistently across every student interaction
Reflect your community's cultural, religious, or local context platform-wide
Keep sensitive topics handled the way your district has decided they should be handled
Give a new teacher a platform that already matches district expectations on their first day
Frequently asked questions
Who can edit these settings? Organization administrators. Access is deliberately limited because a change here affects everyone in your organization. Your CSM will help you identify the right person.
Can my instructions turn off SchoolAI's safety protections? No. Your instructions are added on top of built-in safety and can make things stricter, never looser. Submissions that attempt to bypass built-in protections are rejected with an explanation.
Why was my instruction rejected? Either it read as placeholder text rather than real guidance, or the safety review found it conflicted with SchoolAI's built-in protections. The reason appears directly under the field.
How long can my instructions be? Up to 1,500 characters. Shorter and more specific is followed more reliably.
Do my settings apply to my schools automatically? Yes. Instructions inherit down your organization hierarchy.
Can a school's settings override the district's? A school can be stricter than the district, never looser. Platform safety always takes precedence over any district or school setting.
Can I see who changed our instructions? Yes. The section shows when instructions were last saved and by whom.
What happens to Spaces teachers already built? Custom instructions apply to conversations going forward. They aren't retroactively written into a Space's saved configuration.
Can teachers see what district instructions are being applied? Not currently. District-level instructions aren't displayed to teachers. If your district's guidance is something staff should know about, share it through your usual channels as well.
Can I set different instructions for different schools or grade bands? Not currently. Instructions are set at the organization level and inherited. Customization by grouping is something we're exploring.
Is this available on my plan? Custom Instructions is part of the SchoolAI Scale plan. Your CSM can confirm what your organization has.