1. Quotation marks are literal. Anything inside "..." is spoken exactly as typed. Everything outside them is interpreted.
2. So never put a blank inside quotes. "I'll send you [resource]" is a coin flip on the agent saying the word resource to your customer. If it is in quotes, write the actual words.
3. Every turn ends on a question. The only exceptions are a tool call and the goodbye. An acknowledgement is not a turn on its own — glue it to the next question: "Got it. What kind of business do you run?" A turn that ends on "Got it." leaves your customer waiting in silence.
4. Write the flow, not the logic. "If X then skip Y" belongs nowhere the agent can read as speech — it will eventually say it out loud. Rules about what never to do go in Guardrails.
5. Never point at a rule. Write the sentence out. There is no "see above" and no rule numbering the agent can follow.
6. Leave ${lead_name}, ${phone} and the tool names alone. They are real machinery, filled in before the agent reads the script. Renaming one breaks the call.
7. One field, one job. Script is the flow. Guardrails is the never-list. Nothing belongs in both.
8. Your script replaces the default entirely. Only the fixed rules around it — the recording notice, the tool contract, the goodbye — stay. If you leave a direction unwritten, the agent runs a generic receptionist instead.