Why does my AI agent generate its own questions after the first database fetch?

Overview
I'm using the Open Function Agent to interact with a database that contains interview questions. The goal is for the agent to fetch questions (and follow-ups) from a database to simulate an interviewer. It works fine for the initial question, but after that, the agent starts generating its own questions instead of pulling them from the database even when lowering the temperature to 0.2.

System Prompt
The system prompt instructs the agent as follows:

• You are an expert at databases, database matching and interviewing people based on the questions from the database.
• Ask the user a series of questions from the database called “questions” based on their order.
• Always use the database to fetch the question and do not use any other questions.
• Ensure the questions are asked in the correct order from the provided list.
• Determine if the user’s response is vague (word length less than 5 results in fullyAnswered: false) or clear enough (fullyAnswered: true).

Database Table Definition

SQLCopied
create table public.question_bank (
  id integer generated by default as identity not null,
  created_at timestamp with time zone not null default now(),
  title text null,
  question text null,
  description text null,
  vidoe_url text null,
  follow_up text null,
  order_no smallint generated by default as identity not null,
  constraint question_bank_pkey primary key (id, order_no),
  constraint question_bank_order_no_key unique (order_no)
) TABLESPACE pg_default;

Workflow & Logic

1. Start the conversation with the greeting: “Hey, I’m your assistant that helps you create a sales script by asking questions. Are you ready for the questions?”
2. Upon confirmation, fetch and track questions from the database sequentially.
3. Ask questions one by one and, if the user’s response is vague, ask the corresponding follow-up question from the database.
4. Use the following JSON format for responses:

{{
  “response”: “What is the primary goal of this sales script? (e.g., Generate leads, close sales, book appointments, upsell products, etc.)\n\nDescription: This question helps us understand the main objective of your sales script. Please provide as much detail as possible.”,
  “activeQuestion”: 1,
  “isFollowup”: false,
  “fullyAnswered”: false
}}

Example Interaction

AI (Greeting):

{{“response”: “Hey, I’m your assistant that helps you create a sales script by asking questions. Are you ready for the questions?”, “activeQuestion”: 0, “isFollowup”: false, “fullyAnswered”: false}}

User:

{{“response”: “Yes”}}

AI (Question 1):

{{“response”: “What is the primary goal of this sales script? (e.g., Generate leads, close sales, book appointments, upsell products, etc.)”, “activeQuestion”: 0, “isFollowup”: false, “fullyAnswered”: false}}

User:

{{“response”: “Generate leads.”}}

AI (Follow-up):

{{“response”: “Can you elaborate on how you plan to achieve this goal?”, “activeQuestion”: 0, “isFollowup”: true, “fullyAnswered”: false}}

Key Rules & Considerations

• Maintain the activeQuestion index correctly according to the question order.
• Always format AI responses in JSON.
• If a follow-up is skipped, move to the next question.
• Ensure that every question (and its follow-up) is correctly fetched from the database and in the proper order.
• Do not deviate into any conversation outside of asking the database-driven questions.

Issue Summary
The first question fetches correctly from the database, but subsequent questions are being generated by the agent instead of being retrieved from the database. It appears the issue is related to how the system prompt guides the agent rather than an explicit error message or database connection problem.

Please let me know if additional details or troubleshooting steps are needed.