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Ask HN: How do you manage your prompts in ChatGPT?

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Ask HN: How do you manage your prompts in ChatGPT?

#1
I use ChatGPT regularly for a lot of different tasks. For example, coding, health Q&A, and summarizing docs. The different prompts stack up in the sidebar which becomes very difficult to manage. For example, I frequently have to refer back to a prompt that I wrote previously. But I usually give up looking for it because of the tedious scroll and search process. I was wondering if there is an easier way. How do you manage your prompts in ChatGPT?

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your prompts in ChatGPT?

#7
This is actually one of my biggest issues with ChatGPT, that it's not really possible to create some kind of reusable workflows. The best option is Custom GPTs, to create a specific chat bot for one task.

There are many UI projects for LLMs, like openwebui.com for example. But even with the OpenAI API as backend they don't provide as many features as ChatGPT (Web search, Python processing of data, charting, image generation).

I think one of the most promising approach would be some kind of user scripts for extending the official ChatGPT UI. (user scripts in the browser with some tool like Violentmonkey, FireMonkey, or anything similar to the good old Greasemonkey). I don't use it though, and I don't know if there are any good extensions for ChatGPT.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your prompts in ChatGPT?

#8
Why not just ask the bot to do something? I'm using it daily and don't have to spend more than 5 seconds thinking of a "prompt".

The only exception is function calling (or whatever they call structured output these days), but that is simply embedded in my or other people's programs that call the API.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your prompts in ChatGPT?

#9
I use Claude and Cursor because they’re so much better and don’t require any fancy prompting to not completely suck.

For snippets, I use the system built into Raycast. For non-programming questions, I just ask Perplexity as I’d ask a person and its orders of magnitude better than Google or any single LLM.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage your prompts in ChatGPT?

#10
post #8

Why not just ask the bot to do something? I'm using it daily and don't have to spend more than 5 seconds thinking of a "prompt". The only exception is function calling (or whatever they call structured output these days), but that is simply embedded in my or other people's programs that call the API.

This is what I've found effective.

I use conversational English for basically every prompt I work with ChatGPT on as a regular person.

For my application, I have prompts that I have stored in source code, but those need to have very consistent, exact inputs and outputs (mostly JSON), so creating a specific prompt is important for those.

For anything human where a human can parse it, regular ChatGPT works perfectly fine!

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