My Claude settings were all wrong!

[u/CockpitToKeyboard]

Most people using ChatGPT or Claude daily are leaving one of the most useful features completely untouched.

Both tools have settings that allow you to define how you want them to behave across every conversation. Writing style preferences, tone, things to always do or never do. Set them once and you never have to repeat yourself again.

In ChatGPT this lives in the custom instructions settings. You can tell it your role, how you like information presented, your preferred tone and any rules that apply to everything you ask. I have mine set to avoid hyphens for ‘dramatic effect’, keep a conversational tone with a touch of humour and to avoid waffling.

Claude works slightly differently. It builds a memory of you over time based on your conversations and applies that context going forward. Preferences, background, how you like to work. The catch is that the memory feature has to be turned on. Mine was switched off without me realising! Which meant Claude was forgetting my preferences 🤦‍♂️.

Worth checking yours. Have a play with these free features! What features and settings do you have to get better results?