Activate Your Experts: Tactical AI Personas with Mattermost Agents

We all know that bringing diverse expertise to solve a problem leads to better outcomes. But what if you could tap into specific viewpoints or simulated expert knowledge on demand, directly within your operational workflows? Building on the concept of AI personas – AI configured to act like specific roles – Mattermost Agents provides the tools to make this a reality today.

Forget generic AI assistance. Imagine interacting with an Agent configured as “SRE-Bot,” instantly recalling runbooks for a specific service, or “Cmdr. Eva Rostova,” providing feedback on a mission plan from a simulated command perspective, all within your Mattermost channels. This moves beyond simple Q&A to targeted, role-specific consultation.

Creating Personas in Mattermost Agents: It Starts with the Prompt

The core mechanism is the “System Prompt” in your Mattermost Agents configuration. This is where you define the AI’s simulated identity and behavior. It’s a powerful way to tailor the AI’s responses. You define key attributes such as:

• Name & Role: Defines who the AI is simulating (e.g., “AnalystBot-SOC”, “On Call Engineer – Payments API”).
• Core Expertise/Priorities: Instructs the AI on its primary focus (e.g., “Focuses on network intrusion detection based on MITRE framework,” “Prioritizes system uptime and low latency according to SLA,” “Ensures adherence to NIST CSF controls”).
• Knowledge Base: Can guide the AI to draw from specific context or ingested documentation relevant to its role.
• Communication Style: Shapes how the AI interacts (e.g., “Concise, technical, cites sources,” “Formal, asks clarifying questions before answering,” “Uses standard military brevity codes”).
• Constraints: Sets boundaries on its behavior (e.g., “Does not provide opinions on policy,” “Avoids recommending specific vendors,” “Refers complex queries to human expert channels”).

By carefully crafting this prompt, you instruct the LLM powering Agents to adopt the specified characteristics, ensuring its responses are relevant and aligned with the intended role.

Tactical Applications for Mattermost Users

Using Mattermost Agents, you can configure personas tailored to specific operational needs:

1. Incident Response:
   • Create an “IR Lead” persona trained on your incident response plans. During an event, @mention it in the incident channel: “@IR-Lead-Persona What are the first three steps for a suspected ransomware attack based on Playbook IR-04?”
   • Configure a “Security Analyst” persona to help interpret logs or suggest checks: “@SOC-Analyst-Persona Analyze this firewall log snippet for indicators of compromise related to CVE-2025-XXXX.”
2. Command & Control / Mission Planning:
   • Using Mattermost Agents, we configured a persona representing an “Intel Analyst” to assist during mission rehearsals. Teams could query it (“@IntelAnalyst-Persona Summarize recent activity reports for Sector Gamma”) to surface relevant information directly in the planning channel.
   • Simulate different specialist roles (Logistics, Comms, Legal) to review plans: “@Logistics-Persona Assess the fuel requirements for Option Alpha based on current asset deployment.”
3. DevOps & SRE:
   • Build a persona for a critical service (“@AuthService-SME”) that can answer questions: “@AuthService-SME What are the key dependencies for the login workflow?” based on ingested system documentation.
   • Use a “Release Manager” persona to check deployment checklists: “@ReleaseMgr-Persona Verify if ticket PROJ-123 meets the pre-deployment criteria.”
4. Training & Onboarding:
   • New team members can interact with personas simulating experienced operators (“@SeniorOperator-Persona”) or specific challenging scenarios to practice procedures and communication protocols safely within dedicated training channels.
5. Design & UX Feedback (Leveraging Vision):
   • Post a UI mockup or dashboard screenshot in a channel and @mention a persona configured as a specific end-user type (e.g., “@FieldTech-Persona Does this interface clearly show signal strength and battery life under simulated poor network conditions?”). Mattermost Agents’ vision capabilities allow personas to “see” and provide relevant feedback based on their defined role and priorities.

Built-In Collaboration and Flexibility

The real power emerges in collaboration. Anyone in a channel can @mention a relevant persona, bringing its simulated expertise directly into the team’s conversation. There is no need for separate chats or copy-pasting—the insights appear right where the work is happening.

Furthermore, Mattermost Agents’ flexibility means you can:

• Use different LLMs for different personas (e.g., a highly secure model for sensitive data, a specialized fine-tuned model for technical analysis).
• Set up multiple Agents, each with its unique persona, acting as a readily accessible panel of virtual experts within your Mattermost environment.

Start Experimenting

Stop relying solely on generic AI. Start building targeted AI personas with Mattermost Agents to embed specialized knowledge and perspectives into your team’s workflows. Configure your first persona today and see how it transforms how you tackle complex tasks, conduct training, and prepare for operations.

Explore the Mattermost Agents documentation and begin activating your own virtual experts!