Prompts and topics

The questions Onym asks for you, how they're grouped, and how to choose good ones.

A prompt is one question Onym asks every engine on every run. Good prompts are the questions your buyers actually type, phrased the way they type them.

#Where prompts come from

Library

Every category has a library of 30 to 40 questions, written to cover awareness, comparisons and "best for" questions.

Custom

Your own questions. Add them one at a time or import a list. Paid plans.

Suggested

Ten questions at a time, written from your site and category. Paid plans.

API and MCP

Prompts added with Add prompts or the add_prompts MCP tool arrive as suggestions.

#Statuses

Each prompt on a domain is in one of three states:

Activate, archive and reword prompts in Manage prompts. Changes apply from the next run.

#Topics

Every prompt has one topic, like "Enterprise SSO" or "Open source". Topics group the dashboard and are a filter everywhere: topic=Enterprise SSO in the API counts only those prompts. Library prompts come with topics; custom prompts go under the topic you choose, or "Custom".

#Branded and unbranded prompts

A prompt is branded when its text names any brand: yours ("Is Acme good for SSO?"), a competitor's ("Best alternatives to Auth0?") or several ("Clerk vs WorkOS for B2B SSO"). The name steers the answer toward the brands in the question, so these prompts would inflate some numbers and deflate others. Onym leaves them out by default and reports them separately.

• branded=unbranded (the default) counts only prompts that name no brand.
• branded=branded counts only those that do.
• branded=all counts both.

Comparison questions are still worth tracking: they show how assistants describe you head to head. Look at them with branded=branded.

#Chat and coding prompts

Each prompt runs in the chat lane, the coding lane, or both. Coding prompts are asked of coding assistants, phrased as a developer working in their editor. A prompt in both lanes lets you compare how chat and coding assistants answer the same question. It counts once toward your plan.

#Writing good prompts

• Ask like a buyer. "What's the best way to add SSO to a Rails app?" beats "SSO providers".
• Leave brand names out of open questions. A question that names a brand is a branded prompt and is counted separately.
• Cover the journey: discovery ("what tools exist for…"), comparison ("X vs Y for…") and decision ("best … for a team of 20").
• Prefer more prompts over more runs. Twenty-five prompts once a day tell you more than five prompts five times a day.

#Limits

Imports and activations over your limit stay as suggestions. On a downgrade, the newest active prompts over the limit become suggestions. Nothing is deleted.