If you’ve ever tweaked an Oracle AI prompt for a generative AI feature because the standard response didn’t quite fit your organisation’s needs, there’s an important change coming in Oracle Fusion Cloud.
With release 26C, Oracle has officially deprecated AI Configurator, the tool within HCM Experience Design Studio that allows administrators to override delivered AI prompts. Oracle is replacing it with AI Agent Studio, and whilst the change is optional in 26C, it becomes mandatory from release 26D.
That might sound like plenty of time, but organisations that have customised AI prompts should start planning now. This isn’t an automatic migration, and any existing prompt overrides will need to be reviewed, recreated and tested in the new platform.
AI Configurator was introduced to give administrators greater control over Oracle’s embedded AI experiences. It allowed prompt text to be tailored so that AI-generated responses aligned more closely with organisational terminology, tone of voice or business requirements.
While useful, it was also fairly limited. Administrators could edit the wording of prompts, but they couldn’t introduce new variables, remove existing ones or properly evaluate changes before publishing them. Managing prompt customisations also sat separately from the rest of Oracle’s AI tooling, creating a fragmented experience.
Oracle’s direction of travel has been clear for some time. AI Agent Studio is becoming the central platform for building, configuring and governing AI capabilities across Fusion Applications, so it makes sense that prompt management is moving there too.
For many organisations, this is less about replacing one tool with another and more about adopting Oracle’s strategic platform for AI customisation going forward.
The good news is that AI Agent Studio doesn’t just replicate the functionality of AI Configurator; it significantly expands on it.
Prompt configurations are managed through Large Language Model (LLM) nodes within agent definitions, giving administrators much greater flexibility. Variables can be added or removed, prompts can be evaluated before being published, and configuration sits alongside the wider agent framework rather than in a separate administration tool. This provides a more consistent way of managing Oracle’s AI capabilities and brings prompt configuration into the same governance and security model used for agents.
Beyond prompt management, AI Agent Studio continues to evolve rapidly. Recent releases have introduced visual workflow design, debugging capabilities, policy models, connectors, Builder Assistant functionality and command line support. It is clear that Oracle’s future AI innovation is centred on this platform.
Does Your Organisation Need to Take Action? The answer depends on how you’ve been using Oracle’s AI capabilities. If you’ve been relying solely on Oracle’s delivered AI functionality and haven’t customised any prompts, the transition should be relatively straightforward. You’ll need to enable AI Agent Studio and validate that your existing AI features continue to behave as expected, but there is unlikely to be significant remediation work.
If you have created prompt overrides in AI Configurator, the situation is different. Oracle has confirmed that existing customisations are not automatically transferred into AI Agent Studio. Organisations will need to review their current configurations, recreate them within Agent Studio and carry out appropriate testing before moving into production.
During the transition period, AI Configurator remains available, allowing administrators to reference existing prompt overrides and use them as the basis for their new configurations. However, the responsibility for recreating and validating those customisations rests with each organisation.
If your organisation has customised prompts, I would recommend taking the following approach:
1. Document Existing Prompt Overrides. Before making any changes, review all existing prompt customisations and document them thoroughly. Capture both the prompt text and the business rationale behind each change. Understanding why an override was created is often just as important as understanding what was changed.
2. Identify the Equivalent Configuration in Agent Studio. Each customised prompt will need to be mapped to the relevant LLM node within AI Agent Studio. This is not simply a copy-and-paste exercise, so take time to understand how the functionality is represented in the new framework.
3. Enable AI Agent Studio. AI Agent Studio must be enabled before any migration work can begin. Organisations that haven’t yet activated the capability should factor this into their planning.
4. Rebuild and Review. As you recreate configurations, take the opportunity to challenge whether older customisations are still needed. In many organisations, prompt overrides were introduced to address specific requirements that may have evolved over time. Migration projects often provide a useful opportunity for housekeeping.
5. Test Before You Deploy. One of the advantages of AI Agent Studio is the ability to evaluate prompts before publishing them. Use this capability extensively. Compare outputs against existing behaviour and verify that the results continue to meet business expectations.
In most cases, very little. Oracle has stated that the end-user experience remains consistent, regardless of whether the underlying functionality is delivered through traditional prompt execution or agent-based execution. The transition primarily affects administrators, implementers and those responsible for configuring AI capabilities.
However, organisations that have invested time in prompt customisation should treat testing as a critical part of the transition. Small changes behind the scenes can sometimes produce noticeably different outputs, particularly where prompts have been heavily tailored.
The retirement of AI Configurator is about more than a product being withdrawn. It signals Oracle’s commitment to AI Agent Studio as the single platform for AI customisation across Fusion Applications.
For organisations that have not yet explored Agent Studio, this change provides a compelling reason to start. What is optional in 26C becomes mandatory in 26D, and those who begin preparing early will have far more flexibility than those who wait until the deadline is approaching.
My advice is simple: if you have prompt overrides in AI Configurator, review them now. Understand what needs to be recreated, familiarise yourself with AI Agent Studio and schedule time for testing. A proactive approach today will make the eventual transition considerably smoother.
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K8 Mead 