Someone posted a prompt called “Central Assistant.” It hit 17K views. Then the author rebuilt the whole thing from scratch and shipped something sharper.
That’s HOLT. A free system prompt that turns any AI into a chief of staff. One paste, any model, 90 seconds to set up.
What’s new
HOLT isn’t a vague “be my assistant” prompt. It’s an operating system in text form.
Four gears control how aggressively it acts on your behalf. WATCH is read-only, useful when you’re still building trust with the setup or when the stakes are too high to let anything move without your eyes on it first. DRAFT (the default) prepares everything and waits for your green light, which is where most people should start. MOVE executes reversible actions immediately, good for clearing backlogs or rapid-fire decisions where you’ve already thought through the downside. OWN runs end-to-end on a scope you define upfront, like “own my inbox for the next 30 minutes” or “own this project kickoff prep.” You hand it a boundary, it works inside that boundary without checking in.
All the heavy capabilities are baked in: inbox triage, calendar defense, crisis triage, weekly reviews, decision frameworks, voice mirroring, relationship CRM. There’s also a silent operating loop that runs on every request, invisibly, without you managing it. That loop is doing real work behind the scenes: scanning your stated priorities against whatever you’ve just asked, flagging misalignments before surfacing an answer, and adjusting its communication style based on the gear you’re in. You never see it. You just notice that the output is sharper than what you’d get from a plain prompt, and you can’t quite explain why at first.
The twist
Most people dump a system prompt and forget it. HOLT does something smarter.
On first load, it asks exactly three questions: your name and role, your top 1-3 priorities, and which gear you want. Confirms in one line. Then it goes quiet for the rest of the session.
The priorities you hand it at the start become the filter for every recommendation it makes afterward. If your top priority is “close Q2 pipeline before the board meeting” and you ask HOLT to help you plan your afternoon, it’s going to push back on a two-hour brainstorm that doesn’t move that needle. It won’t lecture you about it. It’ll surface the friction cleanly, give you the tradeoff, and let you decide. You stop managing the AI. It starts managing you. That reframe is what separates HOLT from a fancy template, and from every other productivity prompt you’ve saved to your Notion and never opened again.
How to set it up
- Copy everything between the
<system_prompt>tags from the original Reddit post by u/swami8791 in r/ChatGPTPromptGenius - Paste into ChatGPT Custom Instructions, a Claude Project, or as a system prompt on any model (Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, local models all work)
- Start a new chat and answer the three onboarding questions honestly, your priorities matter here
- Use slash commands as needed:
/focusfor single-action mode,/weeklyfor your review,/escalateto surface the biggest risk before you commit to anything
One thing worth noting on step three: be specific with your priorities. “Grow the business” is too vague for the filter to do anything useful. “Close three enterprise deals before June 15” gives HOLT something concrete to work with. The more precise you are in those first 60 seconds, the more targeted every output will be for the rest of the session.
Pro tips
Stay in DRAFT until you trust it. If an output misses, say so once. HOLT recalibrates for the rest of the session and offers a one-line patch you can add to the prompt permanently. Self-improvement baked right into the system.
The /coach command is underrated. HOLT picks the right decision framework (pre-mortem, 10/10/10, reversible vs. one-way door) and names it before you act. That alone is worth the paste.
Try /escalate before any high-stakes send, whether that’s an investor email, a difficult conversation, or a contract you’re about to sign. HOLT surfaces the one thing most likely to blow up in your face, stated plainly, without the usual AI hedging. It’s like having a sharp second opinion in 15 seconds instead of scheduling a call.
If you’re running HOLT inside a Claude Project or sharing it with a small team, start in WATCH for the first week. Let it observe, absorb patterns, and build context before you unlock the higher gears. That ramp-up matters more than people expect.
Go get it
Search “HOLT chief of staff” in r/ChatGPTPromptGenius or find the post by u/swami8791. It’s free, it works on any model, and it’s one of the most structured AI productivity setups posted this year. 🚀
HOLT — The Chief of Staff Prompt
by u/swami8791 in ChatGPTPromptGenius