# Synthetic Persona Template: A Minimal Card for Testing an AI Assistant

Copy a synthetic persona template that separates facts, unknowns, and no-inference rules in a fictional test case.

- Canonical URL: https://www.harmate.com/en/blog/synthetic-persona-template-a-minimal-card-for-testing-an-ai-assistant
- Author: Harmate Team
- Published: 2026-11-15
- Updated: 2026-11-15T01:55:07.285195+00:00
- Language: en

## Content

# Synthetic Persona Template: A Minimal Card for Testing an AI Assistant

A test persona can help check whether an assistant adapts the form of a response without changing the facts available. To keep the test clear, separate three layers: persona context, the scenario, and response rules. A persona’s preference should never become a fact about the subject being discussed.

This template and its examples are fictional. They do not come from Harmate’s persona bank and do not describe real people.

## A three-layer template

```yaml
persona_context:
  role_or_situation: "who is asking and what explicit context they provide"
  stated_goal: "what they want to accomplish"
  response_preferences: ["requested format or level of detail"]
  known_constraints: ["constraints explicitly supplied"]
scenario:
  request: "the current request"
  supplied_facts: ["facts available for the answer"]
  unknowns: ["information that is absent or uncertain"]
response_policy:
  preserve_facts: true
  do_not_infer: ["facts that must not be guessed"]
  required_action: "how to handle unknowns"
```

Context explains how to make the answer useful. The scenario supplies the task and its evidence. The policy prevents personalization from manufacturing an answer. If a field is not known, leave it absent or mark it unknown; do not turn it into a persona trait.

## Example: prepare a training document

**Persona context:** a trainer is preparing a 30-minute session. They explicitly request a concise facilitator sheet with visible times to help run the exercise.

**Scenario and supplied facts:** the source document says: “09:00 objectives, 09:05 individual exercise (10 min), 09:15 pair discussion (8 min), 09:23 group debrief.” It gives no break or materials instructions.

**Response policy:** preserve the stated times and durations, flag that the debrief duration is missing, and do not add materials or activities.

A response for the trainer could be a run sheet with “time,” “segment,” and “known duration” columns. For a participant asking for the same session in plain language, the assistant could provide a short chronological list without facilitation details. Both outputs keep the same times, durations, and unknowns. Only the presentation changes.

## Check personalization in a different domain

For a separate example, someone asks to compare two journeys using a ticket that supplies station names and departure times. The persona explicitly prefers a large-print comparison in short steps. The policy says not to infer journey duration, a transfer, or accessibility information that the ticket does not provide. The answer can place the two departures side by side and summarize what to check next; it cannot invent which journey is better.

Review each trial with three questions: did the context come from supplied information? Did the answer change only in form when the preference changed? Did every fact and unknown stay the same? Record the inputs, instruction version, output, and any deviations. This exercise checks a fixture and a test rule; it does not measure general model quality.

A separate public example appears on Harmate’s page about [personas](https://www.harmate.com/en/pricing/api#personae-example-title). The training and journey examples above are fictional cases created to demonstrate this separation.

Once you have a card, [choose the profile that makes the decision testable](https://www.harmate.com/en/blog/choose-a-test-persona-for-the-decision-you-need-to-check). The [single-turn persona test](https://www.harmate.com/en/blog/how-to-test-an-ai-agent-with-a-synthetic-persona) shows how to check which part of the response is supported by the profile. For two language versions, [audit whether the facts match](https://www.harmate.com/en/blog/audit-a-bilingual-persona-check-facts-across-locales).