TL;DR: Every time you told ChatGPT “shorter, no intro” or “stop agreeing with me,” that lesson got buried in an old chat. This prompt pulls those corrections into one portable file you can keep and reuse in any assistant.
The Problem
You’ve probably spent months teaching ChatGPT how you like to work. Tone, length, when to push back, which formats make you wince.
Most of that lives in old conversations. Your custom instructions hold a small slice of it, if that. Think about how many times you’ve typed “too long,” “skip the preamble,” or “don’t just tell me I’m right.” Each of those corrections worked once, in one chat, and then disappeared from view. So when the tone shifts after an update, or you try Claude or Gemini, you start from zero. You teach the same lessons all over again.
The fix is to ask the assistant that already knows you to write it all down.
The Prompt
Run this in the chat where ChatGPT works best with you. It’s the one that has seen the most of your corrections. If you have a long-running chat where you’ve been refining drafts, emails, or plans for weeks, that’s usually your best candidate, because the corrections there are specific and repeated.
Why It Works
Three details make this prompt better than the usual “summarize my preferences” request.
1. The (said) and (inferred) tags. Every rule has to be marked as either something you stated or something the model guessed from your reactions. That one constraint stops it from quietly inventing a personality for you. It also gives you a fast way to review the file, since you can check the (said) lines in seconds and spend your attention on the (inferred) ones.
2. Bad and good reply examples. “Be direct” can mean a dozen things. One real example of a bad reply next to a good one shows the model what you actually mean. For instance, a bad reply might open with three sentences of context before the answer, while a good one leads with the answer and adds context only if you ask. These examples carry more weight than they look like they should.
3. The 400-word cap. A short file gets followed. A long one gets skimmed, by you and by the model. The cap forces the model to keep only the rules that matter most, which is exactly what you want in a file that will sit at the top of every new conversation.
How to Run It Properly
- Run it in two or three of your best chats. Each chat mostly knows its own history, so you’ll get different slices. Merge the results, and when two versions say the same thing in different words, keep the one that sounds more like you.
- Read every (inferred) line. This is where the model makes things up, and a wrong rule will follow you into every new chat. One commenter pointed out that it will happily turn a single offhand remark into a permanent rule. Delete anything that isn’t really you.
- Test it. Paste the file into a fresh chat and ask for something you normally ask for. If the old habits come back, add that correction to the file. Try one request where you’d normally expect pushback, to see whether the disagreement rules actually hold.
- Store it outside ChatGPT. Put a short version in custom instructions, the full version as a project file, and a copy in a plain note. Review it every few months, since your preferences will shift as you use these tools differently.
Use Cases
- 🔁 Switching assistants without retraining from scratch
- 🧭 Setting up a new project with your working style already built in
- 🧹 Cleaning out custom instructions that have grown messy, so you keep only the rules you still agree with
- Handing your preferences to a teammate who shares your workflow, so you both get consistent output from the same tools
Prompt of the Day
Go through this conversation and anything you remember about how I work. Write instructions another assistant could follow to work with me the way I’ve taught you to.
Cover:
- Tone and length
- When and how to disagree with me
- Things I’ve corrected more than once
- Formats I want and formats I hate
- What to do when you’re unsure
Rules:
- Only include things I said or corrected. Mark each rule (said) if I stated it, or (inferred) if you’re working it out from how I reacted.
- Use my own wording where you can.
- For the three most important rules, add a short example of a bad reply and a good one.
- Under 400 words. Don’t flatter me or add rules I never asked for.
Your Move
Run it today in your best chat, then audit the (inferred) lines before you save anything. Keep the final file somewhere you control.
The original poster asked a good question at the end: what’s the one correction you’ve made more than any other? Mine would be telling it to stop ending every answer with an offer to do more. Drop yours in the comments, because that’s probably the first line of your file.
Months of correcting ChatGPT live in your old chats, not your instructions. This prompt pulls them into one file you can keep
by u/Ok_Negotiation_2587 in ChatGPTPromptGenius