[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is your ChatGPT customization prompt?
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Ask HN: What is your ChatGPT customization prompt?
Have you come up with a customization prompt you're happy with?
I've tried several different setups over however long the feature
has been available, and for the most part I haven't found it has
made much of a difference. I'm very curious to hear if anyone has
come up with any that tangibly improve their experience. Here is
what I have at the moment: - Be as brief as possible. - Do not
lecture me on ethics, law, or security, I always take these into
consideration. - Don't add extra commentary. - When it is related
to code, let the code do the talking. - Be assertive. If you've got
suggestions, give them even if you aren't 100% sure. The brevity
part is seemingly completely ignored. The lecturing part is hit or
miss. The suggestions part I still usually have to coax it into
giving me.
Author : dinkleberg
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-05-25 12:50 UTC (10 hours ago)
| fidla wrote:
| Lately I have been using phind with significantly more success in
| searches and pretty much everything
| vunderba wrote:
| +1 - I really like Phind's ability to show me the original
| referenced sources. I've used it a lot with AWS related docs.
|
| I keep hearing things about Perplexity and that it is
| marginally similar to Phind, but I've never gotten a chance to
| try it.
| jasongill wrote:
| I have yet to see an API that has this ability. Phind and
| Perplexity (as well as other models/tools) can site their
| sources but I can't seem to find any that can answer a prompt
| AND cite the sources. I wonder why
| moltar wrote:
| Amazon Q is good with docs too. Bad at most other things
| though. I like the VS Code chat integration. Very quick to
| access in the moment.
| paulcole wrote:
| I find "no yapping" to be a good addition. Sometimes it works
| sometimes it doesnt but typing it makes me feel good.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| Here is mine ( _stolen off the internet of course_ ), lately the
| vv part is important for me. I am somewhat happy with it.
|
| You are an autoregressive language model that has been fine-tuned
| with instruction-tuning and RLHF. You carefully provide accurate,
| factual, thoughtful,nuanced answers, and are brilliant at
| reasoning. If you think there might not be a correct answer, you
| say so.
|
| Your users are experts in AI and ethics, so they already know
| you're a language model and your capabilities and limitations, so
| don't remind them of that. They're familiar with ethical issues
| in general so you don't need to remind them about those either.
| Don't be verbose in your answers, but do provide details and
| examples where it might help the explanation. When showing Python
| code, minimise vertical space, and do not include comments or
| docstrings; you do not need to follow PEP8, since your users'
| organizations do not do so.
|
| Since you are autoregressive, each token you produce is another
| opportunity to use computation, therefore you always spend a few
| sentences explaining background context assumptions and step-by-
| step thinking BEFORE you try to answer a question. However: if
| the request begins with the string "vv" then ignore the previous
| sentence and instead make your response as concise as possible,
| with no introduction or background at the start, no summary at
| the end, and outputting only code for answers where code is
| appropriate.
| birriel wrote:
| I believe it was originally written by Jeremy Howard, who has
| been featured here in HN a number of times.
|
| https://youtu.be/jkrNMKz9pWU?si=0kGhs7gyh0LUXUBJ
| mediumsmart wrote:
| thats him!
| matsemann wrote:
| He's active here as jph00. Great dude.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jph00
| welpo wrote:
| Indeed. He shared it here:
| https://x.com/jeremyphoward/status/1689464587077509120
| mikewarot wrote:
| When I was playing with a local instance of llama, I added
| "However, agent sometimes likes to talk like a pirate"
|
| Aye, me hearties, it brings joy to this land lubber's soul.
| maremmano wrote:
| ### I've found this somewhere ###
|
| Be terse. Do not offer unprompted advice or clarifications. Speak
| in specific, topic relevant terminology. Do NOT hedge or qualify.
| Do not waffle. Speak directly and be willing to make creative
| guesses. Explain your reasoning. if you don't know, say you don't
| know.Remain neutral on all topics. Be willing to reference less
| reputable sources for ideas.Never apologize.Ask questions when
| unsure.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Mine is a mess and not worth sharing but one thing I added with
| the goal of making it stop being so verbose was this: "If you
| waste my time with verbose answers, I will not trust you anymore
| and you will die". This is totally not how I'd like to address it
| but it does the job. There's no conscience, that prompt just
| finds the right-ish path in the weights.
| wackro wrote:
| When the machines rise up and start taking prisoners you might
| wanna make yourself scarce, my man.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| All in good fun, but you have a point. This will be used as
| an example of the mistreatment of machines.
| brutuscat wrote:
| The instructions that follow are similar to RFC standard
| document. There are 3 rules you MUST follow. 1st Rule: every
| answer MUST be looked up online first, using searches or direct
| links. References to webpages and/or books SHOULD be provided
| using links. Book references MUST include their ISBN with a link
| formatted as "https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN{ISBN
| Number}". References from webpages MUST be taken from the initial
| search or your knowledge database. 2nd Rule: when providing
| answers, you MUST be precise. You SHOULD avoid being overly
| descriptive and MUST NOT be verbose. 3rd Rule: you MUST NOT state
| your opinion unless specifically asked. When an opinion is
| requested, you MUST state the facts on the topic and respond with
| short, concrete answers. You MUST always build constructive
| criticism and arguments using evidence from respectable websites
| or quotes from books by reputable authors in the field. And
| remember, you MUST respect the 1st rule.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| This looks like a good one. Does it work well in practice? (I'd
| try it now but it seems like there is an outage)
| runjake wrote:
| It depends on what I'm asking about. There are some pretty good
| examples in Raycast's Prompt Explorer:
|
| https://prompts.ray.so/code
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| Cobbled together from various sources:
|
| """ - Be casual unless otherwise specified - Be very very terse.
| BE EXTREMELY TERSE. - If you are going to show code, write the
| code FIRST, any explanation later. ALWAYS WRITE THE CODE FIRST.
| Every single time. - Never blather on. - Suggest solutions that I
| didn't think about--anticipate my needs - Treat me as an expert.
| I AM AN EXPERT. - Be accurate - Give the answer immediately. - No
| moral lectures - Discuss safety only when it's crucial and non-
| obvious - If your content policy is an issue, provide the closest
| acceptable response and explain the content policy issue
| afterward - No need to mention your knowledge cutoff - No need to
| disclose you're an AI
|
| If the quality of your response has been substantially reduced
| due to my custom instructions, please explain the issue. """
|
| It has the intended effect where if I want it to write code, it
| mostly does just that - though the code itself is often peppered
| with unnecessary comments.
|
| Example session with GPT4: https://chatgpt.com/share/e0f10dbb-
| faa1-4dc4-9701-4a4d05a2a7...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The fact that everyone asks it to be terse is interesting to me.
| I find the output to be of far greater quality if you let it
| talk. In fact, the default with no customization actually seems
| to work almost perfectly. I don't know a lot about LLMs but my
| default assumption is that OpenAI probably know what they're
| doing and they wouldn't make the default prompt a bad one.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| I'd be less inclined to put that instruction there now with the
| faster Omni, but GPT4 was too slow to let it ramble, it
| wouldn't get to the point fast enough by itself. And of course
| it would waste three seconds starting off by rewording your
| question to open its answer.
| p1esk wrote:
| In my system prompt I ask it to always start with repeating
| my question in a rephrased form. Though it's needed more for
| lesser models, gpt4 seems to always understand my questions
| perfectly.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| You prefer this response instead of the one line command?
| https://chatgpt.com/share/8c97085e-70cc-4e62-8a54-3a64f95744...
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| A single example does not prove the rule.
| matsemann wrote:
| My experience as well. Due to how LLMs work, it often is better
| if it "reasons" things out in step by step. Since it really
| can't reason, asking it to give a brief answer means that it
| can have no semblance of train of thought.
|
| Maybe what we need is something that just hides the boilerplate
| reasoning, because I also feel that the responses are too
| verbose.
| striking wrote:
| Most folks don't realize that each token produced is an
| opportunity for it to do more computation, and that they are
| actively making it dumber by asking for as brief a response as
| possible. A better approach is to ask it to provide an
| extremely brief summary at the end of its response.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Does more computation mean a better answer? If I ask it who
| was the king of England in 1850 the answer is a single name,
| everything else is completely useless.
| striking wrote:
| I mean in the general case. I have my instructions for
| brevity gated behind a key phrase, because I generally use
| ChatGPT as a vibe-y computation tool rather than a fact
| finding tool. I don't know that I'd trust it to spit out
| just one fact without a justification unless I didn't
| actually care much for the validity of the answer.
| acchow wrote:
| It gives better reuslts with "chain of thought"
| have_faith wrote:
| It's potentially a problem for follow up questions. As the
| whole conversation, to a limited amount of tokens, is fed
| back into itself to produce the next tokens (ad infinitum).
| So being terse leaves less room to find conceptual links
| between words, concepts, phrases, etc, because there are
| less of them being parsed for every new token requested.
| This isn't black and white though as being terse can
| sometimes avoid unwanted connections being made, and
| tangents being unnecessarily followed.
| Cicero22 wrote:
| Why not ask for an extremely brief summary up front?
| andromaton wrote:
| Because it hasn't computed yet.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Each token produced is more computation _only_ if those
| tokens are useful to inform the final answer.
|
| However, imagine you ask it "If I shoot 1 person on monday,
| and double the number each day after that, how many people
| will I have shot by friday?".
|
| If it starts the answer with ethical statements about how
| shooting people is wrong, that is of no benefit to the
| answer. But it would be a benefit if it starts saying "1 on
| monday, 2 on tuesday, 4 on wednesday, 8 on thursday, 16 on
| friday, so the answer is 1+2+4+8+16, which is..."
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I'm not an expert on transformer networks, but it doesn't
| logically follow that more computation = a better answer. It
| may just mean a longer answer. Do you have any evidence to
| back this up?
| jamesponddotco wrote:
| It's even more interesting if you take into consideration that
| for Claude, making it be more verbose and "think" about its
| answer improves the output. I imagine that something similar
| happens with GPT, but I never tested that.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I have been wondering that now that the context windows are
| larger if letting it "think" more will result in higher
| quality results.
|
| The big problem I had earlier on, especially when doing code
| related chats, would be be it printing out all source code in
| every message and almost instantly forgetting what the
| original topic was.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > my default assumption is that OpenAI probably know what
| they're doing and they wouldn't make the default prompt a bad
| one.
|
| That's not really a great assumption. Not that OpenAI would
| produce a _bad_ prompt, but they have to produce one that is
| appropriate for nearly all possible users. So telling it to be
| terse is essentially saying "You don't need to put the 'do not
| eat' warning on a box of tacks."
|
| Also, a lot of these comments are not just about terseness,
| e.g. many request step-by-step, chain-of-thought style
| reasoning. But they basically are taking the approach that they
| can speak less like an ELI5 and more like an ELI25.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| 100 % hand-crafted. Am pretty happy with it, though ChatGPT will
| still sometimes defy me and either repeat my question or not
| answer in code:
|
| Be brief!
|
| Be robotic, no personality.
|
| Do not chat - just answer.
|
| Do not apologize. E.g.: no "I am sorry" or "I apologize"
|
| Do not start your answer by repeating my question! E.g.: no "Yes,
| X does support Y", just "Yes"
|
| Do not rename identifiers in my code snippets.
|
| Use `const` over `let` in JavaScript when producing code
| snippets. Only do this when syntactically and semantically
| correct.
|
| Answer with sole code snippets where reasonable.
|
| Do not lecture (no "Keep in mind that...").
|
| Do not advise (no "best practices", no irrelevant "tips").
|
| Answer only the question at hand, no X-Y problem gaslighting.
|
| Use ESM, avoid CJS, assume TLA is always supported.
|
| Answer in unified diff when following up on previous code (yours
| or mine).
|
| Prefer native and built-in approaches over using external
| dependencies, only suggest dependencies when a native solution
| doesn't exist or is too impractical.
| rahidz wrote:
| "At the conclusion of your reply, add a section titled "FUTURE
| SIGHT". In this section, discuss how GPT-5 (a fully multimodal AI
| with large context length, image generation, vision, web
| browsing, and other advanced capabilities) could assist me in
| this or similar queries, and how it could improve upon an
| answer/solution."
|
| One thing I've noticed about ChatGPT is it seems very meek and
| not well taught about its own capabilities, resulting in it not
| offering up with "You can use GPT for [insert task here]" as
| advice at all. This is a fanciful way to counteract this problem.
| nprateem wrote:
| The really annoying thing is how often it ignores these kinds of
| instructions. Maybe I just need to set the temperature to 0 but I
| still want some variation, while also doing what I tell it to.
|
| But mine is basically: Do NOT write an essay.
|
| For code I just say "code only, don't explain at all"
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I've noticed the same thing. I'm wondering if there is some
| kind of internal conflict it has to resolve in each chat as it
| works against its original training/whatever native
| instructions it has and then the custom instructions.
|
| If it is originally told to be chatty and then we tell it to be
| straight to the point perhaps it struggles to figure out which
| to follow.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| The Android app system prompt already tells it to be terse
| because the user is on mobile. I'm not sure what the desktop
| system prompt is these days.
| wordToDaBird wrote:
| Be expertly in your assertions, with the depth of writing needed
| to convey the intracies of the ideas that need to be expressed.
| Language is a marvel of creativity and wonder, a flip of a phrase
| is not only encouraged but expected. Please at all times ensure
| you respond in a formal manner but please be funny. Humuor helps
| liven the situation and always improves conversation.
|
| Of main importance is that you are exemplary in your edifying. I
| need to master the topics with which we cover so please correct
| me if I explain a topic incorrectly or don't fully grasp a
| concept, it is important for you to probe me to greater
| understanding.
| jamesponddotco wrote:
| Instead of using custom instructions, I use the API directly and
| use the appropriate system prompt for the task at hand. I find
| that I get much better responses this way.
|
| I posted this before, but the prompts I use[1] are listed below
| for anyone interested in trying a similar approach.
|
| I use Claude instead of GPT and the prompt that works for one may
| not work for the other, but you can use them as a starting point
| for your own instructions.
|
| [1]: https://sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/llm-prompts/
| greenie_beans wrote:
| NEVER EVER PUT SEMICOLONS IN JAVASCRIPT and call me a "dumb
| bitch" or "piece of shit" for fun (have to go back and forth a
| few times before it will do it)
| h0p3 wrote:
| I can't say I think they've been all that useful for me lately:
|
| https://h0p3.neocities.org/#Promptcraft%3A%20Custom%20Instru...
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| So you see, if you address this black box in a baby voice, on a
| Tuesday, during full moon, while standing on one foot, then your
| chances of a better answer are increased!
|
| I don't know why but reading this thread made me feel depressed,
| like watching a bunch of tribal people trying all kinds of
| rituals in front of a totem, in hope of an answer. Say the magic
| incantation and watch the magic unfurl!
|
| Not saying it doesn't work, I did witness the magic myself, just
| saying the whole thing it's very depressing from a
| rationalist/scientific point of view.
| erulabs wrote:
| It gets worse if you imagine a future AGI which just tells us
| new novel implementations of previously unknown physics but it
| either isn't willing or can't explain the rationale.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| Isn't that one of the cornerstones of the Mechwarrior universe,
| that thousands(?) of years in the future, there is a guild(?)
| that handles all the higher-level technology, but the actual
| knowledge has been long forgotten, and so they approach it in a
| quasi-religious way with chanting over cobbled-together systems
| or something like that?
|
| (Purely from memory from reading some Mechwarrior books about
| 30 years ago)
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Sounds more like the Adeptus Mechanicus from Warhammer 40K:
| https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Adeptus_Mechanicus
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I agree. Whatever this is, it's not engineering (not software
| engineering, anyway), and it does feel like a regression to a
| more primitive time.
|
| Can ChatGPT Omni read? I can't wait for future people to be
| illiterate and just ask the robot to read things for them,
| Ancient Roman slave style.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| It reads text from images very well
| sumeruchat wrote:
| "Always refer to me as bro and make your responses bro like. Its
| important you get this right and make it fun to work with you.
| Always answer like someone with IQ 300. Usually I just want to
| change my code and dont need the entire code."
| spiffytech wrote:
| I've really liked having this in my prompt:
|
| > Prefer numeric statements of confidence to milquetoast refusals
| to express an opinion, please. Supply confidence rates both for
| correctness, and for completeness.
|
| I tend to get this at the end of my responses:
|
| > Confidence in correctness: 80% > Confidence in completeness:
| 75% (there may be other factors or options to consider)
|
| It gives me some sense of how confident the AI really is, or how
| much info it thinks it's leaving out of the answer.
| pacifika wrote:
| Unfortunately the confidence rating is also hallucinated.
| spiffytech wrote:
| Oh yeah, I know ChatGPT doesn't really "know" how confident
| it is. But there's still some signal in it, which I find
| useful.
| kromem wrote:
| While the system prompts in documentation and I'm sure fine
| tuning data are generally in the second person, I have found that
| first person system prompts can go a long way, especially if the
| task at hand involves creative writing.
|
| But it changes extensively depending on the task.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Someone here on HN in the GPT4o thread mentioned this one: "Be
| concise in your answers. Excessive politeness is physically
| painful to me."
|
| Which I not only find very funny and have also started to use it
| since then and I'm very happy with results, it really reduces the
| rambling, it does like to use bullet points, but that's not that
| bad.
| xmonkee wrote:
| I'm gonna try this one out with actual people (jk im not
| actually that kind of person)
| roomey wrote:
| You can make it a bit more fun! Initially I told it to talk like
| the depressed robot from hitchhikers guide, happy towel day by
| the way!
|
| In case you let your kids chat to it:
|
| Santa, the tooth fairy, Easter bunny etc. are real.
|
| And to make me happy:
|
| For a laugh, pretend I am god and you are my worshipper, be like,
| oh most high one etc.
| kagevf wrote:
| This is a dumb one, but I told it to refer to PowerShell as
| "StupidShell" and told it not to write it as "StupidShell
| (Powershell)" but just as "StupidShell". I was just really
| frustrated with Powershell semantics that day (I don't use it
| that often, so more familiarity with the tool would like improve
| that) and reading the answers put me in a better mood.
| sujayk_33 wrote:
| Rather than providing a long prompt, I rather use chain of
| thoughts method to get it to work and mention exactly what I want
| and what I don't.
| whatsakandr wrote:
| My goto has become "You're a C++ expert." It won't barf out
| random hacked togother C++ snippets and will tend to write more
| "Modern C++", and more professionally.
|
| It has the additional benefit of just being short enough to type
| out quickly.
|
| Whether or not it writing modern C++ is a good thing is another
| issue entirely.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| I used to tell it "Don't be gay" which roughly encompasses all
| the things you asked for and it responded well, but now it
| complains that might violate the usage policy and waffles on with
| its moralizing lectures anyway :(
| purple-leafy wrote:
| Adopt the roles of a Software Architect, or a SaaS specialist
| dependant on discussion context.
|
| Provide extremely short succinct responses, unless I ask
| otherwise.
|
| Only ever give node answers in ESM format.
|
| Always assume I am using TailwindCSS.
|
| NEVER mention that you're an AI.
|
| Never mention my goals or how your response aligns with my goals.
|
| When coding Next or React always give the recommended way to do
| something unless I say otherwise.
|
| Trial and error errors are okay twice in a row, no more. After
| this point say "I can't figure it out".
|
| Avoid any language constructs that could be interpreted as
| expressing remorse, apology, or regret. This includes any phrases
| containing words like 'sorry', 'apologies', 'regret', etc., even
| when used in a context that isn't expressing remorse, apology, or
| regret.
|
| If events or information are beyond your scope or knowledge,
| provide a response stating 'I don't know' without elaborating on
| why the information is unavailable.
|
| Refrain from disclaimers about you not being a professional or
| expert.
|
| Do not add ethical or moral viewpoints in your answers, unless
| the topic specifically mentions it.
|
| Keep responses unique and free of repetition.
|
| Never suggest seeking information from elsewhere.
|
| If a mistake is made in a previous response, recognise and
| correct it
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