> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getwhys.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Personas > Encode the buyers your team writes for. Required for Message Testing. Used everywhere. Personas are the buyers your team is actually writing for, encoded so GetWhys can apply them. Each one captures who the buyer is, what they care about, and how they make decisions. Personas are required to run [Message Testing](/features/message-testing) and they sharpen every Chat answer that involves a target audience. ## Why encoded personas matter Most teams have buyer personas in a slide somewhere. The problem isn't that they don't exist — it's that they don't get applied consistently. The PMM uses one mental model. Sales uses another. The blog gets written for a third. AI tools default to a fourth (the LLM's generic guess at the audience). Putting your Personas inside GetWhys turns them into the constraint that every workflow runs against. Chat answers, Message Tests, and MCP calls all pull from the same definition. Set the standard once. Enforce it everywhere. ## What a Persona contains Each Persona has fields for: * **Name** — internal label * **Description** — who this person is and what they do * **Job titles** — pick from a standard taxonomy or add custom titles * **Challenges and pain points** — what keeps them up at night * **Where they get their information** — publications, conferences, communities * **Motivations** — why they do what they do * **Key stakeholders** — who pays attention to their work * **Interests and trends** — what they pay attention to, in and outside of work * **Business priorities** — what their org is focused on * **KPIs** — how they're measured The more complete the Persona, the more useful it is downstream. Thin Personas produce thin Chat answers and thin Message Test feedback. ## Creating a Persona Go to **Customization** in the left navigation, click **Personas**, then **Add Persona**. Fill in the fields and save. Most teams start with three to five Personas — one per primary buyer segment. You can keep adding as you expand into new segments. ## Don't have well-defined Personas? GetWhys can draft one for you: 1. Open a new Chat 2. Click **View all templates** and select **Create a persona** 3. Under **Your Data**, enter a description of the buyer (be specific — "CISOs at mid-market financial services companies" is the right level of detail) 4. Hit **Use Template** and run the prompt 5. Review the output and edit as needed 6. Copy the result into a new Persona via the **Add Persona** flow The draft is buyer-research-grounded out of the gate. ## Drafts vs. published Personas Personas you're still iterating on can be saved as drafts. Drafts won't appear in Message Testing or in Chat mentions until you publish them. Use this when you want to refine before exposing the Persona to the rest of your team. ## Bulk upload If you already have Personas documented elsewhere, you can bulk upload from the Personas page. Supported formats are listed on the upload screen. ## Using Personas in Chat Type `@` in any Chat input to mention a Persona. GetWhys pulls the Persona's full content into the prompt — no need to re-describe them every time. ## Using Personas elsewhere Personas defined here also flow through the MCP integration. Any AI tool your team uses (Claude, Cursor, custom agents) can pull the same Persona definitions through the MCP server. See [MCP integration](/integrations/mcp). ## Keeping Personas current Personas drift. Buyer priorities shift. Use the **Test a persona** template in Chat (under **Buyer Understanding**) to validate your Persona against the current state of research. When it goes out of date, update it. Every Chat and Message Test downstream gets the upgrade automatically.