Doc Summary
Learn what CRAFT ingredients are and how these reusable components can enhance your recipes and workflows.
Reading time: About 4 minutes Skill level: Beginner
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
After reading this article, you will understand what CRAFT ingredients are, the different types available, and how they fit into the larger framework. You will also understand that ingredients are a newer part of CRAFT that will continue to evolve based on community feedback.
A NOTE ABOUT INGREDIENTS
Ingredients are a newer addition to CRAFT, introduced with the Beta release. This means the concept is still evolving. What you read here represents the current thinking, but expect refinements as the Beta community discovers what works best in practice.
The CRAFT community will play an active role in shaping how ingredients develop. Your feedback on what helps and what could be improved will directly influence future versions. Think of ingredients as an experiment in progress rather than a finished system.
WHAT ARE INGREDIENTS
Ingredients are reusable components that can be used across multiple recipes.
Think of your kitchen pantry. Certain staples appear in many different dishes. Olive oil, salt, garlic, and stock are not specific to any single recipe but get used repeatedly across your cooking. Having them prepared and accessible makes cooking faster and more consistent.
CRAFT ingredients work similarly. They are components you define once and use across many recipes. Instead of re-specifying the same information each time, you reference an ingredient and that information becomes available.
TYPES OF INGREDIENTS
CRAFT currently recognizes several ingredient types. Each serves a different purpose in your AI interactions.
PERSONAS
A persona is an AI personality and expertise template that shapes how the AI responds to you.
When you activate a persona, you define the AI’s voice, expertise areas, communication style, and behavioral patterns. A persona named Morgan the Strategic Brand Architect would respond differently than a persona named Casey the Technical Writer. Same underlying AI, different character and approach.
Personas help you get consistent, appropriate responses for specific types of work. A branding project benefits from strategic marketing expertise. A coding project benefits from technical precision. Personas let you shape the AI’s character to match your needs.
You can use pre-built personas that ship with CRAFT or create your own using the Persona Template. Creating a persona involves defining sections like role, primary function, expertise domains, communication style, and personality traits.
Personas are the most developed ingredient type currently available in CRAFT.
PROFILES
A profile provides contextual information that helps the AI personalize its responses to your specific situation.
There are two main types of profiles.
A User Profile contains information about you as an individual. Your professional background, preferences, communication style, and goals. When the AI knows this context, it can tailor responses to fit your situation rather than giving generic answers.
A Brand Profile contains information about an organization. Brand voice, target audience, value propositions, competitive positioning. When working on brand-related tasks, this profile ensures AI outputs align with established brand standards.
Profiles are created and stored on your local computer. This is intentional for privacy. Your personal and business information stays with you, never uploaded to external servers. You control what context the AI receives.
The Brand Identity Cookbook includes recipes that help you create a comprehensive Brand Profile through a structured discovery process.
ADDITIONAL INGREDIENT TYPES
Other ingredient types are planned or under development for CRAFT. These include collections of proven prompts and integrations with external prompt methodologies.
Details on these additional types will be documented as they become available and stable. For now, focus on Personas and Profiles as the primary ingredient types you can use today.
HOW INGREDIENTS WORK WITH RECIPES
Recipes can reference ingredients to enhance their functionality.
A recipe might specify that it works best with a particular persona activated. When you run the recipe, you activate that persona first, and the recipe benefits from the persona’s specialized approach.
A recipe might request profile information as input. Instead of answering the same context questions each time, you reference your existing profile and that context flows into the recipe automatically.
This connection between ingredients and recipes creates efficiency. Define your context once in a profile, and every recipe that needs that context can access it. Activate a persona once, and every recipe in your session benefits from that expertise.
CREATING YOUR OWN INGREDIENTS
You can create custom ingredients tailored to your specific needs.
For personas, CRAFT provides a template with required and recommended sections. You fill in the template with your desired characteristics, save it as a text file, and reference it in your sessions.
For profiles, you can build them manually or use recipes designed to help you develop them through guided questions. The Brand Identity Cookbook, for example, walks you through creating a comprehensive Brand Profile.
As ingredients evolve, expect additional tools and templates to make creation easier. Community contributions will also expand the library of available ingredients you can use or adapt.
PRIVACY AND INGREDIENTS
Profiles deserve special attention regarding privacy.
Profiles contain personal or business information. User Profiles might include your professional background, preferences, and goals. Brand Profiles might include competitive positioning, target audience details, and strategic information.
CRAFT is designed so these profiles stay on your local computer. You create them locally, store them locally, and include them in sessions only when you choose. No ingredient data is uploaded to CRAFTFramework.ai or any external service.
This privacy-by-architecture approach means you control your data. Include what you want, when you want, with the AI you choose.
WHAT TO EXPECT AS INGREDIENTS EVOLVE
Because ingredients are newer to CRAFT, expect changes as the community learns what works.
Some ingredient types may become more prominent as users find them valuable. Others may be refined or consolidated based on practical experience. New ingredient types may emerge as patterns become clear.
Your participation in the Beta community helps shape this evolution. Share what works. Identify what could be improved. Suggest new ingredient types that would help your workflows. This collaborative development is part of what makes CRAFT a community-driven framework.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Q: Do I need to use ingredients to use CRAFT? A: No. Ingredients enhance CRAFT but are not required. You can run recipes without any ingredients and get valuable results. Ingredients add efficiency and consistency when you are ready for them.
Q: Where do I find pre-built personas? A: Official CRAFT personas are available through CRAFTFramework.ai. The community will also share personas as the Beta progresses.
Q: Can I share ingredients I create? A: Yes, with appropriate caution. Personas can be shared freely. Profiles contain personal or business information, so share only what you are comfortable making public.
Q: How do ingredients differ from recipe parameters? A: Parameters are specific to a single recipe execution. Ingredients persist across multiple recipes and sessions. A parameter might be the topic for this blog post. An ingredient might be your brand voice that applies to all blog posts.