I’m building a parent–child bot system in Pickaxe where the Parent Bot routes user input to specific Child Bots (e.g., Red, Blue, Green, Yellow). Each Child Bot has its own clear system prompt.
For example, the Blue Bot has the following system prompt:
You are the **Blue Bot**.Whenever you are called list 5 objects that are blue in color
However, when I test routing through the Parent Bot, the expected output from the Blue Bot (a list of 5 blue objects) is not returned. Instead, I see what looks like the default Pickaxe greeting message, e.g.:
Hello! I’m the Blue bot from Action code, ready to help with AI customized to your needs. What can I do for you today?
This suggests that instead of executing the system prompt of the Blue Bot, the platform is responding with its own generic message.
Expected behavior:
When the Parent Bot routes to the Blue Bot, the Blue Bot should follow its system prompt and directly list 5 blue objects.
Actual behavior:
The system ignores the Blue Bot’s custom prompt and falls back to a default Pickaxe greeting.
This issue prevents the modular parent–child setup from working as designed, since none of the Child Bot custom logic is being executed.
Can anybody help me understand the issue and help me resolve it?
Welcome to the Pickaxe community. I’ve noticed a trigger prompt issue, and I’ve replied to your email with the steps and screenshots you need to fix it.
Congratulations, but that kind of thing would be best shared here where other members of the Community can benefit.
We are considering a multi-Pickaxe system for our image generator…It sounds like those resouces would help us.
Hi @kenlyle, Thanks for mentioning this. In this case, screenshots were shared over email which made it much easier to understand and respond quickly. Since some of those details might touch on privacy, I kept the direct reply off the forum. That said, @turboagents is working on some really cool products, and I’ve encouraged him to post here as well so the wider community can give feedback and ideas.
I have a PA generating an image, and would like to pass it to another PA so that the user could add some fields before I send the whole package to Make, and in one particular case/vertical, the second PA would not be needed- the idea is to modularize the system, and it sounds very like what @turboagents was doing.
To drive the logic, would that be added to the prompt? “If Image type is A or B, call the other Pickaxe, if type C, end.” or would that go in the Action that I am asking about? “Call yourself If Image type is A or B”
@kenlyle:
It is quite simple and can be accomplished without any code. I will share a generic flow.
Let me share a basic example similar to this thread. You need the Rainbow Bot to route specific queries to other colour bots. For example, if someone types “Blue” in the parent rainbow bot, it should trigger the blue bot. Let us see how that works.
Make sure all Pickaxes are in the “Same” studio. It can trigger Pickaxes if they are part of the same studio.
And that’s it! You can do it with multiple bots within the same studio. You can change colour names to Pickaxe A, Pickaxe B, etc.
Real-life example:
Imagine you are running a customer support studio with multiple bots. One bot handles billing, another handles tech support, and another handles product tutorials. Your parent “Support Hub Bot” can listen to a customer typing “I have a billing issue” and automatically route them to the Billing Bot. If they say “I need help with setup,” it routes them to the Tutorial Bot. This way, your users don’t need to guess which bot to click - the parent bot intelligently connects them to the right helper.
Common Mistake with Trigger Prompts:
Start with a short and clear trigger prompt. A lot of people think longer and complex prompts work better, but that’s not true. Simple prompts usually give the best results. Test it, then make small changes until it works the way you want.
One big reason people run into issues is that ChatGPT (or other AI tools) doesn’t fully understand how the trigger function works. It often suggests long and complicated prompts that overwhelm the AI Builder and cause problems. As you can see above, a basic prompt works really well. It’s usually easier and more reliable to write your own simple trigger prompt instead of asking another AI to do it for you.
Excellent. Thanks.
Should something like my example “If the chat subject is A or B, call the other Pickaxe, if type C, end.” work?…because I have a maximum of 3 actions.
Do all objects Returned by the action, including the current image in the Editor, get sent automatically?
@kenlyle
I’m really glad you found it helpful! The best way to see how it behaves is to test it directly - things can be unpredictable when working only with hypothetical A, B, C, and D examples. If you keep your prompts simple and clear, it should work smoothly.
If you notice something missing or think an advanced feature could help the wider community, please feel free to share it in the Feature Requests section; we always appreciate new ideas and feedback.
