> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.peoplelogic.dev/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.peoplelogic.dev/guides/getting-started-with-the-talent-agent-sdk/advanced/externalizing-your-prompts.md).

# Externalizing your prompts

To help make it easier to manage your code, you may want to move your hardcoded prompts for SystemMessage annotations to files within your resources folder (or even an S3 bucket).  Fortunately, this is easy to do in the SDK.  Just update your `@SystemMessage` to the following:

```java
@SystemMessage(fromResource = "prompts/starter.prompt")
```

where prompts is a folder inside of `src/main/resources` and starter.prompt is a file containing your prompt. That's it!  The prompt file will not be automatically re-read when changed, so for now you will still need a restart to pick up the latest changes.

{% hint style="info" %}
Today, loading system messages from S3 is an exercise left to the reader.   Hot reload and leveraging S3 as a system message provider will be added soon.
{% endhint %}


---

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