Imagine transforming a simple chatbot into your personalized digital assistant. OpenAI introduced a feature that does just that: with Custom Instructions, you can now prepend custom text to every message in a conversation.
Beyond basic chat
This might at first seem like an innocuous feature: surely you can do the same with copy-paste. However, having that option preset and out of your mind transforms ChatGPT from a powerful yet generic bot into an assistant that feels deeply personal without having to constantly control its behaviour. Instead of sticking to the basic examples often cited by OpenAI, let's delve into the untapped potential of this feature.
Here are three ways to use Custom Instructions that will change how you use the tool forever.
1. Easily control the output format
Switching between verbose and concise outputs can be simplified using a custom instruction like:
If the first word is terse/concise/default/comprehensive/exhaustive, use the matching verbosity. When exhaustive, being comprehensive in depth and breadth.
Simply insert the appropriate keyword to control how chatty the answer should be.
2. Define custom slash commands
While you can't "program" ChatGPT per se, you can tell it to follow commands, like this:
Slash Commands:
/questions - Ask pertinent and interesting questions a curious user would ask
/summarize - Summarize the conversation so far
/critique - Criticize your previous answer before improving your output
3. Customize the output
You can apply our previous insights to create custom instructions. For example, in order to leverage its attention mechanism or optimize context size, we can ask it to:
Output your answers in concise bullet point form, prefixing each with a relevant emoji
Before answering, concisely list what your expertise in the domain is and how you are approaching the problem. Think step by step.
Make ChatGPT your own
We've only begun to explore the myriad ways how ChatGPT can be improved using custom instructions. ChatGPT AutoExpert offers many insights (including instructions tailored for code). Yet, the most effective instructions will be the ones tailored by you, for you.