Many teams love Rovo’s default “helpful assistant” behavior — it’s great for broad questions.
But when you're trying to build a specialist agent (e.g., Feature‑Manager‑Only), something frustrating happens:
❗ Rovo drifts.
Even with tightly written Behavior instructions and restricted Skills/Knowledge, the agent still wanders into:
- estimation
- test‑case writing
- general Jira/Confluence support
This happens because Rovo, by default, acts like a general assistant, even when you try to narrow it down — a behavior confirmed in Atlassian’s documentation, where agents are designed to “collaborate and move work forward” in broad ways unless constrained.
Also, agents retain generic knowledge unless you override it with specific sources.
So even highly constrained instructions can only do so much.
✅ Pattern: Scenario Kill‑Switch (Make Rovo Stay in Its Lane)
This method forces Rovo to perform one job exceptionally well — and nothing else.
1️⃣ Create a Custom Scenario for Your Specialist Agent
Inside this scenario:
✔ Add all required Skills
Only the ones relevant to the specialty.
✔ Add only the knowledge sources needed
No generic Confluence spaces, no Jira projects outside the domain.
✔ Add scenario instructions
Explain exactly what the agent should do and what the scenario covers.
✔ Add relevant triggers
This increases match reliability and ensures the agent switches into the specialist mode predictably.
💡 Tip:
Before testing, make sure the scenario is enabled and that your triggers realistically match the queries users will type.
2️⃣ Set the Default Scenario to Empty (the Kill‑Switch)
Your default scenario should contain:
- 0 skills
- 0 knowledge
- No instructions
(Optional but recommended) Add a polite refusal message:“Sorry — I’m a specialist agent for <purpose>, and I can’t help with that request.”
This effectively neuters the agent outside your specialist scenario.
🧠 Why This Works
Atlassian’s scenario system activates a custom scenario only when its triggers and instructions match.
When no custom scenario matches, Rovo falls back to the Default Scenario.
So:
- Your specialist scenario = fully powered, fully capable
- Your default scenario = powerless, empty sandbox
This means:
✔ Rovo cannot answer anything outside the specialist domain
✔ Rovo cannot fall back to general “assistant mode”
✔ Rovo becomes a true domain‑specific agent, not a helpful generalist
✔ No need for long behavioral refusal prompts
This is a structural constraint, not a prompt‑based one — and structural constraints always win.
