What is the Handbook?

The Handbook is the internal counterpart to the Knowledge Base. The Knowledge Base is what you’d happily put on your public website — answers customers can read directly. The Handbook is everything you’d never put there: escalation scripts, refund policies, “if X happens, do Y”, the wording you use when a VIP customer is unhappy, the specific checklist when a payment dispute arrives.

Atender’s AI agents — Sidekick, Web Chat, voice — read the Handbook as context. It shapes how they behave: which escalation paths to suggest, what tone to take, which policies apply. They use the Handbook to inform their answers, but they never quote it directly to customers. The Handbook stays private to your team.

What lives in the Handbook

Things that are right for the Handbook:

• Escalation procedures. “If the conversation involves a chargeback, transfer to the Billing team and tag legal-review.”
• Refund policies. The actual rules — who’s eligible, how much, what approvals are needed.
• Tone and language guidance. “When a customer mentions a death in the family, lead with empathy, never offer a discount.”
• Internal contact protocols. “Issues affecting more than 10 customers go to #incidents. Issues affecting an enterprise account go to the account owner.”
• Step-by-step troubleshooting that includes internal tools. “Open the admin panel, look up the customer’s user ID, paste it into the dashboard…”
• Specific scripts. “Use this exact wording when offering a goodwill credit.”

Things that belong in the Knowledge Base instead, not the Handbook:

• Customer-readable how-tos. “How to update your payment method” goes in the KB.
• Product feature explanations. “What is your refund policy?” — the customer-facing version goes in the KB; the internal enforcement of that policy goes in the Handbook.
• FAQs that shouldn’t be a secret. If you’d publish it on your help center, it’s a KB article.

How the Handbook is structured

The Handbook is intentionally simpler than the Knowledge Base:

• Handbook — A tenant can have more than one Handbook. Each Handbook is its own partition, with its own categories and procedures. If more than one Handbook exists, use the Handbook picker to choose which one you’re working in.
• Procedure — A single Handbook entry — title, body, keywords, category. Written in the editor or imported from Markdown.
• Category — Top-level grouping for procedures within one Handbook. Two-level depth only: categories → procedures. No subcategories, sections, or roles.
• Keywords — Up to 10 per procedure for AI retrieval.
• Visibility — A simple on/off toggle. Off means the procedure is hidden from agents and AI; useful for drafts.
• Access rules — Per-procedure or per-category settings. The confidential flag is enforced for Agent Stack answers; optional scope settings are stored for future targeting.

Imported Markdown becomes normal Handbook procedure content, with the title taken from the leading # heading or, if there isn’t one, the file name.

There’s no draft / published / needs-review workflow. There are no tags. There are no cross-cutting sections. The Handbook trades flexibility for speed — your team is the audience, and the audience is small enough that simpler structure works.

Access rules

Every procedure (and every category) can have one or more access rules attached. Access rules currently have two parts, but only the confidential flag is enforced at runtime:

• Confidential flag — when on, the procedure or category is hidden from Agent Stack answers across text and voice. The content can still be found by Sidekick, Supervisor, API/MCP management reads, and handbook admins.
• Scope — optional metadata for future targeting, such as limiting a procedure to the main agent or to a specific agent config. Scope is stored, but it does not yet enforce per-stack or per-agent retrieval restrictions at runtime.

A procedure with no confidential rule is available to eligible AI agents using the same Handbook partition. If your tenant has more than one Handbook, the Handbook picker determines which partition you’re editing; the agent retrieves from the Handbook partition bound to its Agent Stack, or the default Handbook if none is bound.

Do not rely on scope settings to isolate one Agent Stack from another yet. Until runtime scope enforcement exists, use the confidential flag when you need to keep a procedure or category out of Agent Stack customer-facing answers.

This is how you keep sensitive internal guidance out of customer-facing Agent Stack responses while still letting your team manage and review it.

How AI agents use the Handbook

When a Specialist Agent (or Sidekick on a conversation) is composing a response, it retrieves Handbook procedures relevant to the question — same hybrid retrieval pipeline as the Knowledge Base. The retrieved procedures are added to the agent’s context as guidance, not as quotable content.

“Available to eligible AI agents” means agents using that same Handbook partition, after enforced confidential rules are applied. If your tenant has multiple Handbooks, the Handbook partition bound to the Agent Stack controls which categories and procedures are considered for retrieval. Scope settings may appear on procedures or categories, but they are stored for future use and should not be treated as active runtime restrictions yet.

This is why Handbook procedures should be written in instruction language (“If X, do Y”) rather than article language (“This document explains X”). The AI follows them; it doesn’t transcribe them.

When to write a Handbook procedure vs. a KB article

Use the Handbook when:

• The content is internal — you wouldn’t show it to a customer.
• It guides agent behavior or AI behavior.
• It contains specific tools, internal jargon, or sensitive details.

Use the Knowledge Base when:

• The content is customer-facing.
• A customer searching the help center should find it.
• You’d happily link to it from your product or marketing site.

If you’re not sure, ask: “Would I be comfortable if a customer read this verbatim?” If yes, KB. If no, Handbook.

Where to go next

• Write a procedure: Write a Handbook procedure
• See the difference clearly: Knowledge Base vs. Handbook
• Configure who sees what: access rules are configured inline in the Handbook procedure editor.