# Allow AI Persona/Agent to respond only to @mentions, not to replies to its posts

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-ai-persona-agent-to-respond-only-to-mentions-not-to-replies-to-its-posts/399221
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** ai, ai-bot
**Created:** [March 25, 2026, 11:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-ai-persona-agent-to-respond-only-to-mentions-not-to-replies-to-its-posts/399221 "2026-03-25T11:25:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
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### Author: ![saurabhmithal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/saurabhmithal/32/378295_2.png) [@saurabhmithal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/saurabhmithal)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2026, 11:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-ai-persona-agent-to-respond-only-to-mentions-not-to-replies-to-its-posts/399221/1 "2026-03-25T11:25:16Z")

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When an AI Persona has “Allow topic mentions” enabled, it responds in two situations:

1. When a user @mentions the bot in a post

2. When a user replies to one of the bot’s existing posts

I’d like a way to limit the persona to only respond when explicitly @mentioned, and _not_ respond automatically when someone replies to its post.

**Use case:** I run an AI bot in a community forum where members discuss topics with each other. Sometimes a member replies to the bot’s post to continue talking to other humans in the thread — not to ask the bot another question. The bot jumping in on every reply creates noise and disrupts the natural conversation flow.

I tried handling this via the system prompt (instructing the persona to only respond when @mentioned), but this doesn’t reliably work — the LLM is already triggered to generate a response by the time it sees the prompt.

**Proposed solution:** A separate toggle in the persona settings, something like:

- ☑ Allow topic mentions (existing)

- ☑ Respond only to @mentions (new — when enabled, replies to the bot’s posts would not trigger a response)

Or alternatively, a single setting like “Require @mention to respond in topics” that covers this behavior.

Would love to hear if others have run into this or if there’s a workaround I’m missing. Thanks!

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