System Prompts

Every AI feature in Return, from chat and assessments to rewrite suggestions and batch analysis, is driven by a system prompt: the standing instructions the AI receives before it sees your request. Return ships with a curated set of defaults, and you can inspect or customize any of them in Settings → Prompts.

Defaults that stay current

The built-in prompts are part of the app itself. When you update Return, you always get the latest versions - improvements to the defaults arrive automatically, with no action on your part.

Which language does the AI answer in?

The prompts themselves are written in English - that’s what AI models follow most reliably - but the output adapts to you:

• Chat replies in the language you write in. Text the AI inserts into your document follows the document’s own language.
• Returns (Summarize, Risk Assessment, and the rest) answer in your document’s language. Return detects it when it first analyzes the document and stores it in the document’s memory - you can see and change it in the document details panel (the Language field, a short code like pl or en).
• Returns with an explicit target language, like Translate, always follow their own setting.
• Asking for a language explicitly (“answer in English”) always wins.

Customizing a prompt

Open Settings → Prompts, pick a prompt, and press Edit. The editor shows the current template; prompts use simple {{placeholder}} tokens that Return fills in at runtime.

When you save, your version is stored as an override:

• The prompt is marked with a small dot in the list - hover it to see it means “customized”.
• Your override stays in effect across app updates - updating Return never overwrites your changes.
• Everything you didn’t customize keeps following the built-in defaults, including future improvements.

Some prompts contain placeholders the app depends on (they’re listed above the editor). Return won’t let you save a version that removes one - that would silently break the feature the prompt powers.

Going back to the defaults

• Reset on a customized prompt removes just that override.
• Restore all defaults removes every override at once.

Either way, the built-in prompt takes over immediately - no restart needed. Changes to prompts apply to your next AI request.

Note: a customized prompt is pinned to your wording. If a later app update improves the built-in version of that particular prompt, you’ll keep your own until you reset it.