AI Model Context Settings

Every AI Model step in Agent Studio has a Context panel that controls which runtime information is sent alongside your prompt. These settings determine what the model can see beyond your instructions — the current time, who is asking, what files are attached, and how much of the conversation it remembers. Getting context right has a direct impact on answer quality, token cost, and whether the model behaves consistently across different trigger sources.

Quick reference

Setting	Default	What it does
Date and time context	On	Adds a system message with the current date and time
Timezone	UTC	Controls which timezone the date/time is presented in
User details context	On	Adds a system message with the user’s profile and preferences
Always include user input	On	Ensures the original user message reaches the model, even when the step is not directly connected to the Input step
Include Attachments	On	Passes uploaded files and images into the model’s context
Include the chat history	All history	Sends previous conversation turns so the model can follow multi-turn dialogue

Date and time context

When enabled, Airia injects a system message before your prompt:

The current date and time is 2026-03-26T14:30:00+00:00;
please use this information for any references to the present moment.

The timestamp is generated fresh on every execution and formatted in ISO 8601. The model uses it to ground any time-sensitive reasoning — deadlines, scheduling, relative dates (“last week”), or seasonal context.

When to enable
When to disable

Agents that answer questions about dates, deadlines, or schedules
Workflow agents triggered on a cron that need to know “today”
Any prompt that includes phrases like “as of today” or “this quarter”

Even with this setting enabled, you can also reference the same value inside your prompt text using the {{ Helpers.CurrentDateTime }} expression. The context setting provides it as a separate system message; the expression lets you embed it inline. You can use both — they complement each other.

Timezone

Controls the timezone applied to the date/time context message. The dropdown offers three modes:

Mode	Behaviour	Best for
UTC (default)	Timestamp is always in UTC (`+00:00`)	Backend agents, cron jobs, internal tooling where a consistent reference is preferred
Custom	A fixed IANA timezone you choose (e.g., `America/New_York`, `Europe/London`)	Agents that serve a known geography — e.g., a customer support bot for US East Coast hours
Client	Uses the end user’s browser timezone, sent at execution time	Global-facing chat agents where each user expects times in their own local zone

When a custom or client timezone is set, the injected message includes the timezone name:

The current date and time is 2026-03-26T10:30:00-04:00 (Eastern Daylight Time);
please use this information for any references to the present moment.

If the client timezone is unavailable at runtime (e.g., the agent was triggered via API without timezone data), Airia falls back to UTC silently.

User details context

When enabled, Airia injects a system message containing the authenticated user’s profile:

Consider the following preferences and information about the user
when crafting your response:
{"General":"Senior account manager at Acme Corp","WorkDescription":"Manages enterprise renewals","PersonalPreferences":"Prefers concise bullet points over long paragraphs"}

This includes three fields from the user’s Airia profile:

Field	What it contains
`General`	Free-text bio or role description
`WorkDescription`	The user’s job function or responsibilities
`PersonalPreferences`	Communication style, formatting, or language preferences

When to enable
When to disable

Personalised assistants that adapt tone, detail level, or vocabulary to the user
Agents that need to know the user’s role to scope their answers (e.g., executive summary vs. technical deep-dive)
Internal tools where users have filled in their Airia profile

User profile data is separate from the {{ User.FirstName }}, {{ User.Email }} template expressions. The context setting sends the full profile JSON as a system message. The expressions let you embed individual fields inline in your prompt. See the Prompts page for the full list of User properties.

Always include user input

In a multi-step agent, not every AI Model step is directly connected to the Input step. For example, a three-step agent might look like:

Input → Step 1 (Classifier) → Step 2 (Responder)

Step 2 receives its input from Step 1, not from Input. Without this setting, Step 2 would only see the classifier’s output — it would have no idea what the user originally asked. When Always include user input is enabled (the default), Airia ensures the original user message is added to the model’s context regardless of graph wiring.

When to enable
When to disable

Most agents — you almost always want the model to see the user’s original question
Multi-step agents where downstream steps need the original request for grounding
Agents where the upstream step transforms or summarises the input, but the final model still needs the raw question

A dedicated summariser step that should only process the output of a previous step, not the raw user query
Steps that intentionally isolate the model from the user’s wording (e.g., a reformulation step whose output replaces the original)
Agents triggered by webhooks or schedules where UserInput is empty or a system payload — including it would add noise

Disabling this on a step that is the only AI Model in your agent usually means the model receives no user message at all. Only disable it when the step genuinely should not see the original input.

Include Attachments

When enabled, any files or images the user uploads with their message are added to the model’s context. This includes:

Included data	Description
File name	The original filename (e.g., `Q1-report.pdf`)
Content type	MIME type (e.g., `application/pdf`, `image/png`)
File content	The file’s content, processed for the model to read

When to enable
When to disable

Document Q&A agents (“summarise this PDF”, “extract the table from this image”)
Agents that analyse uploaded images (charts, screenshots, photos)
Any agent where users are expected to attach files as part of their workflow

Not all models support all file types. Vision-capable models (GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Gemini Pro Vision, etc.) can process images natively. For non-vision models, only text-extractable content (like parsed PDFs) will be useful. Check your model’s capabilities before relying on attachment processing.

Include the chat history

Controls how much of the conversation the model can see. Click the dropdown to choose one of three modes:

All history

Every previous message in the conversation is included. The model has full context of everything said so far.

Last N messages

Only the most recent N messages are included. You specify the number. Older messages are silently dropped.

No history

No previous messages are included. The model treats every request as if it is the first message in the conversation.

Choosing the right mode

Mode	Best for	Trade-off
All history	Conversational assistants, multi-turn reasoning, coaching bots	Token usage grows with conversation length. Long conversations can hit context window limits.
Last N messages	Assistants with long sessions where only recent context matters (e.g., customer support, troubleshooting)	Good balance of continuity and cost control. Experiment with N — 10–20 messages is a common starting point.
No history	Single-shot tasks (classification, data extraction), webhook-triggered agents, scheduled pipelines	No conversational memory. Each execution is stateless. Lowest token cost.

If your agent uses the Debug tab and you notice the model is repeating itself or contradicting earlier answers, check your chat history setting. “All history” with very long conversations can push important context out of the model’s effective attention window. Switching to “Last N” often fixes this.

How context settings relate to prompt expressions

Context settings and prompt expressions are two complementary ways to give the model runtime information. They are not mutually exclusive — many agents use both.

Mechanism	How it works	When to use
Context settings (this page)	Airia injects pre-formatted system messages automatically. You do not write them — they appear alongside your prompt.	When you want the information available to the model without embedding it in your prompt text. Simple toggle, zero prompt editing.
Prompt expressions (`{{ }}`)	You write Scriban expressions directly inside your prompt. They are evaluated at runtime and replaced with values.	When you need precise control over wording, placement, or conditional logic around the data.

Example — Date/time both ways: The Date and time context toggle adds this system message automatically:

The current date and time is 2026-03-26T14:30:00+00:00;
please use this information for any references to the present moment.

The prompt expression {{ Helpers.CurrentDateTime }} lets you embed the same timestamp inside your own instructions:

Today is {{ Helpers.CurrentDateTime }}. Any deadline the user mentions
should be compared against this date.

Using both is fine — the model sees the information twice, but from different angles. The context setting provides a generic grounding message; the expression lets you frame it specifically for your use case.

Recommended presets by agent type

Conversational assistant
Single-shot classifier
Document processing pipeline
Scheduled background agent

A general-purpose chat agent that talks to end users.

Setting	Value	Why
Date and time context	On	Users ask time-sensitive questions
Timezone	Client	Each user sees times in their own zone
User details context	On	Personalises tone and depth
Always include user input	On	Model always sees the question
Include Attachments	On	Users may share files
Include the chat history	All history	Multi-turn conversation requires full context

An agent triggered by API or webhook that classifies incoming text and returns a category.

Setting	Value	Why
Date and time context	Off	Classification is time-independent
Timezone	—	N/A (date/time is off)
User details context	Off	Classification should not depend on who sent it
Always include user input	On	The input is the text to classify
Include Attachments	Off	Text-only input
Include the chat history	No history	Each call is independent

A multi-step agent that receives a file, extracts data, and produces a structured output.

Setting	Value	Why
Date and time context	On	Useful if documents reference relative dates
Timezone	UTC	Consistent timestamp for audit trails
User details context	Off	Processing is content-driven, not user-driven
Always include user input	Off	The model should focus on the extracted document, not the upload message
Include Attachments	On	The file is the primary input
Include the chat history	No history	Each document is processed independently

A cron-triggered agent that runs overnight to generate reports or process queues.

Setting	Value	Why
Date and time context	On	Report needs to know the current date
Timezone	Custom (e.g., `America/New_York`)	Reports are for a specific region
User details context	Off	No interactive user
Always include user input	Off	Input comes from the trigger payload, not a person
Include Attachments	Off	No file uploads in scheduled runs
Include the chat history	No history	Stateless execution

Troubleshooting

Model doesn't know today's date

Enable Date and time context in the Context panel. Without it, the model can only guess the date based on its training data — which will be wrong.If it is already enabled and the model still gets the date wrong, check whether your prompt contains conflicting date references (e.g., a hardcoded “Today is January 1, 2025” in a shared segment). The model may trust the explicit prompt text over the injected system message.

Model keeps referencing old messages or contradicting itself

This usually happens with All history on long conversations. As the conversation grows, the model’s effective attention can drift. Try switching to Last N messages (start with 10–20) to keep the context focused on the recent exchange.

Token usage is unexpectedly high

Two common causes:

Chat history set to All: Every previous message is sent on every turn. A 50-message conversation means 50+ messages in the context window on the 51st turn.
Attachments enabled with large files: Uploaded documents consume significant tokens. If your agent does not process files, disable Include Attachments.

Use the Debug tab on any execution to inspect the full context sent to the model and identify which component is consuming the most tokens.

Model ignores the user's question in a multi-step agent

Check that Always include user input is enabled on the AI Model step that needs to see the original message. In multi-step flows, downstream steps do not receive the user’s input automatically unless this setting is on.

Overview

Agent Fundamentals

AI & Prompts

Agent Behaviours

Workflow Steps

Lifecycle & Quality

Interface Options

Sharing Agents

AI Model Context Settings

Quick reference

Date and time context

Timezone

User details context

Always include user input

Include Attachments

Include the chat history

All history

Last N messages

No history

Choosing the right mode

How context settings relate to prompt expressions

Recommended presets by agent type

Troubleshooting

​Quick reference

​Date and time context

​Timezone

​User details context

​Always include user input

​Include Attachments

​Include the chat history

All history

Last N messages

No history

​Choosing the right mode

​How context settings relate to prompt expressions

​Recommended presets by agent type

​Troubleshooting

Quick reference

Date and time context

Timezone

User details context

Always include user input

Include Attachments

Include the chat history

Choosing the right mode

How context settings relate to prompt expressions

Recommended presets by agent type

Troubleshooting