Customization

The controls you have over what Otis analyzes, what it publishes and how it writes, and where each one is set.

You can shape how Otis analyzes your product: what it pays attention to, how sure it must be before it publishes, how it writes, and which definitions it measures against. This page lists each control, where you set it, and what it changes.

The controls aren't in one place. Some are in your project's settings, some are set by asking Otis in a chat, and some are written by the coding agent that sets up Otis in your codebase.

Location of each control

Control	Where you set it
Guidelines for how Otis writes and what it surfaces	Project settings, or chat in the Otis app
Product context and priorities	Chat in the Otis app
Your own role and focus	Chat in the Otis app
Numbers to watch	Chat in the Otis app, or the star on an insight
Segments and cohorts	Chat in the Otis app
Lifecycle setup	Chat in the Otis app
Funnels, measurements and investment events	The setup agent
Slack, briefing and time zone	Project settings
API keys and redaction	Project settings

"Chat in the Otis app" means a chat with Otis in the app itself. Use it, and not Slack, for these controls.

The setup agent is a coding agent that is connected to the Otis MCP server, such as the one you used to instrument your code. Agent skills describes it.

Guidelines

Guidelines tell Otis how to write and what to surface. They apply to insights, to the daily briefing and to chat.

You set them on the Otis Guidelines tab of your project's settings. You can also ask Otis to change them in a chat in the Otis app. Otis then shows a card with the change, and applies it when you confirm.

Setting	What it does
How sure before flagging something?	Sets how much evidence a finding needs. "Only strong signals" requires at least 100 cases and a strict test for chance. "Balanced" is the default. "Surface early signals" leans toward publishing sooner.
Tone	The voice Otis writes in.
Who it's for	The audience Otis writes for.
Language	The language Otis writes in.
Show the numbers	Adds ranges of uncertainty to quantitative claims.
Pay attention to	Topics that Otis gives more weight when it decides what to surface.
Steer clear of	Topics that Otis won't raise unprompted.
Notes	Anything else, in your own words.

The confidence setting is a hard rule. With "Only strong signals", a finding below the bar isn't published and doesn't reach the briefing. The other settings are instructions that Otis follows when it writes.

Team and personal guidelines

Guidelines exist at two levels. Team guidelines apply to everyone and to everything Otis publishes. Personal guidelines apply to your own chats with Otis.

Personal guidelines cover tone, audience, language and notes. Where you have set one of these, it replaces the team's value for you. The team's guidelines decide everything else.

Product context and priorities

Otis keeps a set of facts about your product, your business and your customers. It collects them when you set up your project, and it reads them whenever it investigates or answers a question.

To add or correct a fact, tell Otis in chat. A corrected fact replaces the old one.
To add a document, upload it in the chat. Otis accepts PDF, text, Markdown and image files of up to 10 MB. Documents you upload during onboarding are added automatically. Later, ask Otis to add the document to its knowledge base.
To state a priority, tell Otis what your team is trying to achieve. Otis records each priority with a time horizon, and uses the priorities when it frames a finding and chooses what to feature in the briefing.

A priority doesn't hide other findings. Otis still publishes a finding that matches none of your priorities. A priority stops being used after 60 days unless you restate it.

Facts and priorities are shared with your whole team. Otis also keeps notes about your own preferences and working style, and reads them whenever it works on the project. Treat them as visible to your team. Memories and knowledge base describes what Otis stores.

Your role and focus

You can tell Otis your role, what you are responsible for, what you are focused on now, and what you aren't focused on. Otis uses your focus in your own chats and in your personal briefing. It uses the roles on your team to judge who a finding is relevant to.

Your focus doesn't change which insights Otis investigates or publishes for the team.

Numbers to watch

Ask Otis in a chat in the Otis app to watch a number, and it appears in your project's daily briefing. You can watch:

A named measure, such as monthly recurring revenue, weekly active users, or the share of sessions from power users.
A group and a measure. The group can be one of the four built-in segments, the 7-day or 30-day cohort, the members of an account, or users of at least a given age. The measure can be a count of users, or the rate of a signal.

Starring an insight that is about a tracked measure also adds that measure.

A watched number is shared with your team.

Segments and cohorts

You create and remove your own segments and cohorts by asking Otis in a chat in the Otis app. Segments you define describes what a definition can express and the limits that apply.

Investment events

The built-in segments decide affinity from investment events, which are optional actions that show a user's commitment. Your project can declare which of its events count. Without a declaration, Otis infers a set from your funnels and measurements.

The declaration is written by the setup agent. Ask it to set the investment events for your project. A good set has at least two events that recur, such as sharing and inviting, and at most one event that happens only once.

Lifecycle

Ask Otis in a chat in the Otis app to set up the lifecycle. It records three things:

The group type that pays, such as workspace. Without one, Otis tracks individual users.
The plan order. Your plans from lowest to highest, each marked as free, trial or paid.
Where plan changes come from. This tells the setup agent whether to add lifecycle events to your code.

Setting the plan order replaces the whole list, so give Otis every plan each time. Update the plan order before you launch or rename a plan.

Slack. A team admin connects your Slack workspace in the team's settings. On the Integrations tab of the project's settings, you then choose whether Otis posts insights, whether it posts the team briefing, and which channels it uses.
Time zone. The General tab sets the project's time zone. Otis uses it to time the daily investigation and the briefing. It is UTC until you set one.
Personal briefing. The Integrations tab has a switch for a briefing sent to you alone.

Otis posts each new insight to the channel when it is published. The briefing is sent in the morning in the project's time zone.

Data

API keys. The Ingestion tab creates, disables and revokes keys. Each key is for production or for development. Otis analyzes production data only. It keeps development data for one day and doesn't analyze it.
Redaction. The Redaction tab turns the detection of personal data on or off, and sets how aggressive it is. A change applies to data that arrives after it. Data already stored isn't redacted again. Privacy describes what is redacted.

Data health and gaps gives the retention period for each kind of record.

Permissions

Project settings are for project admins. A project admin is an admin of the team, or the person who created the project.
Controls set in chat are open to every member of the project. That includes team guidelines, segments and cohorts, lifecycle setup, watched numbers and product context.
The setup agent acts as the person who connected it. It can write funnels, measurements and investment events for any member, and it needs an admin to create an API key.

Insights covers what the guidelines steer.
Segments and cohorts covers the definitions you can create.
Agent skills covers the setup agent.
Customization in the SDK guide covers the options your app sets when it starts the SDK.