Marvin best practices

Keep real data on a trusted provider

In production, keep the active provider set to the self-hosted local server. Real client data must never be sent to a third-party API. Marvin enforces this with a guard, but the setting is your first line of defence.

Use development mode for experiments

When trying a new prompt or comparing engines, switch the environment to Development and use fake records only. Never point Development mode at real data.

Write a clear persona

Set a system persona that tells Marvin to answer only from the data provided and to never invent figures, dates or names. A good persona dramatically reduces wrong answers from smaller self-hosted models.

Keep answers short

Lower the max-token setting for faster, cheaper, more focused replies. Most data questions need only a sentence or two.

Review conversations

Check Marvin → Conversations periodically to see how Marvin is answering. Because every exchange is stored, you can catch and correct weak phrasing early.

Respect privacy

• Conversations are kept for oversight and inherit your normal data-protection duties.
• A user deletion or erasure request removes that person's threads through the standard soft-delete.
• Only administrators should have access to the conversation overview.

Size the hardware to the model

On the self-hosted server, VRAM is the limit. A 7–8B model at Q4_K_M fits an 8 GB card comfortably; avoid 13B+ models on that hardware.