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The first time you open Pi, spend a few minutes introducing your business. Tell it what you sell and who you sell to, hand it a recent sales or planning call, and confirm the name and voice it proposes. That first pass gives Pi enough to start working, and you can revisit anything it wrote in the Files panel later.

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What to cover in the first conversation

You don’t need a script. Talk to Pi the way you’d brief a new hire on your first day together. The things worth getting across early:
  • What your company does, and the product you’re trying to grow.
  • Who you sell to, and the problem you solve for them.
  • Your goals for the next month or two, and any competitors you watch.
  • A recent sales or planning call, pasted in, so Pi picks up the specifics in your own words.
A prompt to start with: 
I'm setting you up for my business. We are [what your company does]. We sell
[product] to [who you sell to], and the main thing we want to grow is [goal].
Give yourself a name and voice, then save the key facts about us to memory.
Pi proposes a name and voice, writes them down, and starts its memory of your account. Then hand it your latest call so it inherits the specifics: 
[paste your latest sales or planning call] Save this to memory, and pull out the
focus keywords and areas we care about for the first month.
Pi's first chat, asking who you are and what to call it, then writing its IDENTITY and USER files.

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The files that shape Pi

As you talk, Pi writes a few core files about your account and reads them back at the start of every chat. That’s how it stays consistent and gets sharper over time.
FileWhat it holds
SOUL.mdPi’s persona and voice for your account.
IDENTITY.mdThe name and character Pi gives itself for you.
MEMORY.mdThe index of what Pi knows, pointing to the detail files under memory/.
The Files panel showing IDENTITY.md, MEMORY.md, SOUL.md, and USER.md at the top level.
Pi sets these up and refines them as you work, so you rarely touch them by hand. When you want to see or adjust one, open it in the Files panel. To read more on how memory works and how to save things to it, see How Pi works with files.
🎬 Video planned: the first setup conversation with Pi, naming it and filing your first call to memory. See the shot-list.

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For the technically savvy: how these files reach Pi

Skip this unless you’re curious about the internals. It doesn’t change how you use Pi. Every turn, Pi rebuilds its own instructions (its system prompt) from scratch. The instructions are assembled in a fixed order: a hardcoded base (who Pi is and how it works, the same for everyone), then the tools it can call, then an index of its skills, then your account’s files, then your organization’s profile. Your files sit near the end, so they layer your specifics on top of the shared foundation. The account files are loaded like this:
  • SOUL.md, IDENTITY.md, and MEMORY.md are read on every turn and dropped into the prompt (each wrapped in its own labelled block). Editing one takes effect on the next message.
  • MEMORY.md is injected whole, which is why it’s kept as a short index that points to detail files under memory/ rather than holding everything itself.
  • A one-time BOOTSTRAP.md runs the very first setup conversation, then deletes itself, so it only shapes Pi while you’re getting started.
  • Empty files are skipped, so a file only affects Pi once it has content.
Two things worth knowing. Pi’s core stance and values are baked into that hardcoded base, not into SOUL.md, so editing SOUL.md adjusts tone on top of a foundation you can’t remove. And Pi may keep a small USER.md with notes about you (like your name or timezone); today that file is for its own reference and isn’t part of the instructions it loads. Next: Research your company and build the Product Bible · Related: The thesis