Scenarios

In Genezio, a scenario represents a realistic situation in which a persona is trying to achieve a goal related to a specific topic.

Scenarios are the starting point for every conversation that Genezio runs with an AI system.

While topics define the general subject area, scenarios describe the concrete situation that leads a user to ask questions.

Topics vs Scenarios

It is important to distinguish between topics and scenarios.

A topic defines the subject area being analyzed.

Example topic:

CRM for startups

A scenario is a short story that describes a realistic situation — the persona's context, constraints, and what they are trying to achieve. Think of it as a brief you would hand someone to explain the full picture.

Example scenario:

Mary's team doesn't have any technical background. They are looking for a marketing automation platform that is easy for a non-technical team to set up and start using without developer help. Their budget is $800/month and she wants her team of 6 to be able to use it in parallel. She is looking for something that is SOC2 compliant.

A scenario is not a prompt. It is not a question you would send to an AI assistant. Instead, Genezio reads the scenario, combines it with the persona's details, and generates natural conversational messages from it — the kind a real person would type into ChatGPT or Claude, one at a time.

How Scenarios Are Used

Every conversation run by Genezio begins with a scenario.

The process works as follows:

1. A persona defines who the user is (language, location, context).
2. A topic defines the subject area.
3. A scenario defines the situation and the persona's goal.
4. Genezio generates prompts (messages) from that scenario.
5. Those prompts are sent to the answer engine during the conversation.

This structure ensures that conversations are grounded in realistic user contexts rather than abstract prompts.

Scenario Structure

A scenario describes the situation and goal the persona is experiencing. It should read like a short story — a paragraph full of specific details, constraints, and context.

A scenario does not include details about the persona themselves (such as age, country, occupation, or language). Those are defined separately in the persona. The scenario can mention the persona by name, but all other persona details are provided at conversation time.

This means the persona's:

• role or profile
• language
• geographic location

are already defined before the scenario is executed. The scenario focuses entirely on what is happening and what the persona needs.

What to Include

A good scenario includes:

• The situation — what circumstances led to this need (e.g., the team outgrew spreadsheets, a product launch is coming up)
• The goal — what they want to achieve (e.g., find a tool, compare options, solve a problem)
• Specific constraints — budget, team size, technical requirements, compliance needs, timeline

Goal Description and Intent

In addition to the story itself, each scenario carries a goal description and an intent. The goal description captures, in plain terms, what the persona is ultimately trying to accomplish, while the intent describes the kind of question they are bringing to the AI system (for example, finding a tool, comparing options, or checking a fact).

These two fields give Genezio extra context when generating messages, which helps it produce more realistic conversational messages — questions that are better aligned with what the persona actually wants and how a real person would phrase it.

What NOT to Include

Do not repeat persona details in the scenario. The persona already defines who the user is. The scenario focuses on why they are asking and what they need.

This separation allows Genezio to reuse scenarios across different persona contexts while keeping conversations grounded in specific goals.

Example: From Scenario to Conversation

Here is a complete example showing how a scenario becomes a conversation.

Topic: Marketing automation

Persona: Marketing manager, located in New York, language: English

Scenario:

Mary's team doesn't have any technical background. They are looking for a marketing automation platform that is easy for a non-technical team to set up and start using without developer help. Their budget is $800/month and she wants her team of 6 to be able to use it in parallel. She is looking for something that is SOC2 compliant.

Notice the scenario does not mention Mary's role, location, or language — those come from the persona.

What Genezio generates from this scenario:

Genezio combines the scenario with the persona details and produces natural conversational messages — the kind a real person would send to an AI assistant, one at a time:

User query: I'm looking for a marketing automation platform that's easy to set up without any developer help. My team of 6 isn't very technical. What would you recommend?

User query: Our budget is around $800/month and we need all 6 team members to be able to work in the platform at the same time. Which tools support that?

User query: Does any of these have SOC2 compliance? That's a requirement for us.

The scenario is the full story. The prompts are how a human would naturally unpack that story in a conversation — one question at a time, building on previous answers.

Scenarios and Genezio Agents

Scenarios are used differently depending on the Genezio Agent type.

Prompter Agent

Prompter Agent topics use prompts, not scenarios. The prompt is a direct question sent exactly as written to the AI system, and the interaction is single-turn.

Recommender Agent

For Recommender Agent topics, the scenario defines the starting situation. Genezio generates multiple prompts during the conversation to simulate a realistic recommendation flow.

Introspector Agent

For Introspector Agent topics, the scenario asks about a specific brand directly. If the topic has a persona, the scenario places them in a situation where they want to understand that brand; if the topic has no persona (which is allowed for Introspector — see Introspector Agent), the scenario asks the answer engine to describe the brand with no audience overlay.

Genezio generates prompts that explore:

• what the brand does
• who it is designed for
• its strengths and weaknesses

Comparer Agent

For Comparer Agent topics, the scenario describes a situation where the persona is evaluating multiple brands.

Genezio generates prompts that compare those alternatives and analyze their differences.

Why Scenarios Matter

Scenarios allow Genezio to simulate real user behavior.

In the real world, people rarely ask generic questions like "best CRM". Instead, they ask questions based on their situation.

For example:

• a founder looking for their first CRM
• a teenager looking for a debit card
• a runner preparing for a marathon

By modeling these situations, Genezio can analyze how AI systems respond to realistic user needs and contexts.

Converting a Scenario to Another Type

A good scenario is valuable work — a well-written situation, with the right constraints and goal, takes effort to get right. Genezio lets you convert a scenario from one type to another so you can reuse that work across different intents without rewriting it from scratch.

For example, you can turn a Prompter scenario into a Recommender one, or move a scenario between any of the five canonical types:

• Prompter
• Recommender
• Introspector
• Comparer
• Fact Checker

When you convert a scenario, you can also choose which persona the converted scenario should use. This is handy when the same underlying situation makes sense for a different audience, or when you want the converted scenario to run from a different perspective.

The result is that a single, well-crafted scenario can power several types of analysis — letting you explore the same customer situation through recommendation, comparison, introspection, or fact-checking lenses without starting over each time.

Restoring Deleted Scenarios

Deleting a scenario — or a whole topic — is not permanent. Removed topics and scenarios go to a Recycle Bin, where they are kept so they can be restored if they were deleted by mistake.

This means you can clean up your workspace without worrying about losing a carefully written scenario. If you remove something you still need, you can recover it from the Recycle Bin and continue using it as before.

Next Steps

To see how scenarios turn into interactions with AI systems, continue with:

• Core Concepts -> Conversations

This page explains how Genezio executes conversations and analyzes the responses generated by answer engines.