Feat/custom system prompts by astkwcz · Pull Request #437 · nextcloud/integration_openai

astkwcz · 2026-09-25T12:16:00Z

Configurable system prompts for summary and translation tasks

Earlier work:

Feat/configurable summary system prompts #425 - this PR introduced summary system prompts, that were set using php occ, was rejected because of talk_meeting flag. The idea was to use text2text provider for Talk. I made a PR to spreed and it was merged feat(talk): support configurable call summary prompts spreed#19111

Related work:
There is already merged functionality for configurable system prompts set by admin #433 (@Abhijeet-035, @lukasdotcom) introduces that, so I think that I should explain myself and my work a little, considering SummaryProvider
I started working on this PR before #433 was merged, so those two PRs overlap. I implemented the prompt per service using ServiceConfig which is why instance-wide setting from #433 is reverted. I reverted it to keep one place in UI instead of two. I am happy to keep global default as fallback if you prefer.

Summary system prompts

There are 3 types of system prompts configuration:

user system prompt (Advanced options in Assistant UI)
admin system prompt (that can be set in Admin Settings > Assistant)
default system prompt (hard-coded in repo: You are a helpful assistant that summarizes text in the same language as the text. You should only return the summary without any additional information.

How it works:

user system prompt (if set) overrides admin system prompt (if set) and default system prompt . It also ignores format and complexity options. The idea is that user knows what they want and the can define thiers output format however they wants
admin system prompt (if set) overwrites default system prompt and can be overwritten by user system prompt (if set). It appends format and complexity option, so the idea is that prompt should be more general and should not define format and complexity
default system prompt will be used only if user system prompt and admin system prompt are not set

Translation system prompt

I introduce that because I had troubles with translation. Sometimes model outputs only translated text and sometimes it outputs orginal text + translation line by line. It was not coherent

can be defined by admin
cannot be defined by user, because
- it will require PR to Assistant repo https://github.com/nextcloud/assistant/blob/main/src/components/Translate/TranslateForm.vue
- translation is more general task and do not require that much configuration as summary which can be text oriented
admin configured system prompt is appended to hard-coded system prompt, because it ensures proper output format

UI look

Admin system prompts for summarization and translation

Textareas are under the section System prompts
It is nested inside Text generation so if we toggle that off, System prompts will not be visible

User defined system prompt for summary

This reverts commit f9dfdf8.

…n/default Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

…dmin/default Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

…er/admin Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

…pt - admin Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

edward-ly

Hello, thanks a lot for tackling this! We've been discussing the changes internally, and while we agree that it would be nice for admins to be able to customize the system prompts, we're not sure if we can say the same for normal users. Not only does it add additional, unneeded complexity for users, we don't see any meaningful use cases for it either. Would you be able to remove the user part from this PR or, at the very least, split the user part into a separate PR and add more justifications to it?

Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

astkwcz · 2026-10-09T11:53:29Z

Hello, thanks a lot for tackling this! We've been discussing the changes internally, and while we agree that it would be nice for admins to be able to customize the system prompts, we're not sure if we can say the same for normal users. Not only does it add additional, unneeded complexity for users, we don't see any meaningful use cases for it either. Would you be able to remove the user part from this PR or, at the very least, split the user part into a separate PR and add more justifications to it?

@edward-ly Hi, thanks for your feedback. I removed user-defined summary system prompt option from this PR. I added a new PR #444 with user-defined summary system prompt option and justification - it is stacked on #437

edward-ly

Works great in my testing so far! Just a few small changes and we can get this in. On top of my other comments, the initial revert commit is missing a sign-off trailer, so that should be fixed too.

Also, since this is your first contribution, I recommend reviewing our AI Contributions Policy in case you haven't seen it yet. I don't know for certain if you've used any AI assistance for this PR, but I would appreciate any disclosures if you did (or if you didn't, an explicit mention stating that).

edward-ly · 2026-10-09T23:23:16Z

+	/**
+	 * The admin-configured system prompt appended to the built-in translation
+	 * prompt for the translation task type. The built-in prompt is always kept,
+	 * as it enforces the expected JSON response format.
+	 * An empty string means only the built-in prompt is used.
+	 */


This comment isn't relevant to this particular function. Also, I think the code is TranslateService is clear enough to know what is happening, so I don't think it's necessary either.

edward-ly · 2026-10-09T23:23:34Z

+	/**
+	 * The admin-configured fallback system prompt for the summary task type.
+	 * An empty string means the built-in default prompt is used.
+	 */


This comment isn't relevant to this particular function. Plus, it is redundant anyway, so it should be removed.

edward-ly · 2026-10-09T23:23:59Z

-	.line--full {
-		width: 100%;
-	}
-
-	.line .input--full {
-		width: 100%;
-	}


Perhaps the new text boxes should keep their full width too. The current boxes are too small to comfortably fit longer prompts.

github-actions · 2026-10-10T07:26:22Z

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astkwcz added 5 commits September 25, 2026 13:00

Revert "feat: make summary system prompt configurable"

f94ae80

This reverts commit f9dfdf8.

feat(summary): add configurable system prompt for summary - user/admi…

7fbbe02

…n/default Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

feat(translation): add configurable system prompt for translation - a…

5f04f50

…dmin/default Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

tests(summary): add test for configurable summary system prompts - us…

e2ebd4c

…er/admin Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

tests(translation): add test for configurable translation system prom…

3d530f1

…pt - admin Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

edward-ly requested changes Oct 8, 2026

View reviewed changes

refractor(summary): remove user-defined system prompt from scope

75dc75b

Signed-off-by: Arkadiusz Sitkiewicz <a.sitkiewicz@wbgroup.com>

astkwcz mentioned this pull request Oct 9, 2026

Feat/user summary prompt #444

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astkwcz requested a review from edward-ly October 9, 2026 11:55

edward-ly requested changes Oct 9, 2026

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github-actions Bot added the feedback-requested label Oct 10, 2026

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astkwcz commented Sep 25, 2026

Configurable system prompts for summary and translation tasks

Summary system prompts

How it works:

Translation system prompt

UI look

Admin system prompts for summarization and translation

User defined system prompt for summary

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