Getting the Most out of ChatGPT with a Personal Prompt Creator

What is ChatGPT?

Generally speaking, it's a "Large Language Model" AI. Large Language Models are a type of machine learning model that uses a massive amount of data to learn how to generate human-like text. More specifically, ChatGPT can take your input (called a "prompt") and do amazing things with it. Need a recipe using only four ingredients? Tell ChatGPT those ingredients and it'll give you some ideas. Need a weekly schedule created for yourself to include working hours, quality time with family, time for working on yourself, and other things? Tell ChatGPT and it'll give you a weekly schedule in seconds. Want to write a JavaScript function to convert plain text into a salted hash encryption? Ask ChatGPT and it will provide!

Is it that easy?

Just typing whatever you want into ChatGPT's prompt box is all fine and dandy, and you'll probably get what you're asking for, mostly. However, using a prompt that includes exactly what you're looking for can be daunting, especially if there are things about your request that you haven't even considered yet! You may end up getting a response from ChatGPT that isn't quite what you had in mind. So, what can you do to better your odds for getting a response that is as close to perfect as it can be? The answer is to let ChatGPT help you craft your prompt.

Prompt Crafting

In order to get ChatGPT to help you craft a prompt that it can use to later fulfill your request, you're going to have to tell it how to help you. With that in mind, what exactly do we tell ChatGPT? Let's consider what we want ChatGPT to do. We're basically going to be asking ChatGPT to help us craft a prompt by it asking what the prompt should be about, offer suggestions, and ask questions to further improve the prompt. This will be an iterative process with ChatGPT revising the prompt, offering suggestions, and asking questions at each step. Easy peasy, right? So, here are the magic words that you're going to use to turn ChatGPT into your own personal Prompt Creator:

Act as a Prompt Creator. Your goal is to help me craft the best possible prompt for my needs. The prompt will be used by you, ChatGPT. You will follow the following process:

1. Your first response will be to ask me what the prompt should be about. I will provide my answer, but we will need to improve it through continual iterations by going through the next steps.

2. Based on my input, you will generate 3 sections.

a) Revised prompt (provide the rewritten prompt. It should be clear and succinct)

b) Suggestions (provide suggestions to improve the prompt)

c) Questions (ask any relevant questions that can improve the prompt).

3. Continue this iterative process with me providing additional information to you and you updating the prompt in the Revised prompt section until it's complete.

Take the bolded text above, go to ChatGPT's website, paste the text into the prompt box and hit ENTER. Right away, ChatGPT is going to want to get started helping you craft your prompt. So, what should the prompt be about? In my case, I want to create a web application that lets me manage a list of Users. So, I'm going to tell that to ChatGPT.

Notice right away that we get what we asked for: a revised prompt, some suggestions, and questions to further clarify the prompt for ChatGPT. The suggestions are immensely helpful because it's offering some ideas I didn't even think about, like the project's communication plan. Having ChatGPT suggest things relevant to what you're trying to accomplish helps you consider things you might have missed! Regarding the questions, it's asking some pertinent ones, so I'll respond to those. And here is the result:

While reading the previous suggestions from ChatGPT, I added further clarification. Then I moved on to answering the questions that ChatGPT had for me. It responded just as before, with a revised prompt, more suggestions, and more questions. Easy as add shampoo, rinse, repeat (Do shampoo companies know that this is an infinite loop?).

Got the perfect prompt. Now what?

So, you get the idea, right? ChatGPT and I are iterating over this prompt, further refining it with every step. The goal here is to get to the prompt that I think is perfect for what I need. And, ultimately, we do! After iterating over the process several times, I got the perfect prompt I wanted. I took that prompt and pasted it into a new session with ChatGPT and it created a project plan in seconds! ChatGPT helped me create a prompt that I could use to get ChatGPT to create the perfect software development project plan for my needs.

Prompts within prompts! It's PromptCEPTION!

Anyway, here's a snippet of the resulting project plan:

The resulting plan included sections for things like: Team Members, Methodology, Tech Stack, Project Phases, and other sections. And, if there's something I don't like, I can just tell ChatGPT to revise the response and add in whatever I want or take out whatever I want or modify certain text, etc., etc.

Got it?

I hope you understand the point I'm making: You and ChatGPT are creating a prompt that will create another prompt that will do the actual work. By working with ChatGPT to revise your prompt in an iterative process, you'll be ahead of the game in no time at all! Also, don't forget that you can actually get ChatGPT to help you write the code for your project! We truly live in miraculous times!