Set up custom instructions, two projects and memory settings to suit the way you work.
Priya, an HR executive who has appeared throughout the course, set up custom instructions, projects and memory in her main AI assistant, then wrote down what she had done (an invented example, as is everything about her below). You are going to do the same with your own assistant in about thirty minutes, and finish with a written record of the setup.
Most people who use an assistant every day have never opened its settings. Without any setup, every chat starts from nothing, and you end up retyping the same background in message after message. The three lessons before this one covered the tools that fix this, and this exercise puts all three in place at once.
You need the assistant you use most, your notes from lesson 6.1, "Custom instructions: what to say once", and a few reference files for the jobs you do most often. If any of those files are work files, check your company's rules before you upload anything, as lesson 6.2 explained.
If you drafted custom instructions after lesson 6.1, revise them now; if you didn't, write them now. They should cover your role, the people who usually read your work, your location and the Singapore context, your spelling preference, and the formatting habits you want or dislike. Keep the whole thing under 150 words.
Test them on three typical questions of the kind you really ask in a normal week. Run each question twice, each time in a fresh chat, once with the instructions on and once with them off. Compare the two answers and check whether the instructions brought each answer closer to something you could use, and whether any line pushed an answer somewhere you didn't want it to go. If a test goes badly, find the line responsible and either make it more general or remove it.
Priya tested hers on a staff message, on how to structure an interview, and on weekend ideas with her nephews. The first two answers improved. The third came back in short, plain sentences suited to frontline staff, which was fine, and in British spelling, which she wanted, so she left her instructions as they were and nothing needed changing.
A project is a workspace for one recurring job, holding short instructions and reference files. Pick your two most frequent recurring jobs, meaning the ones where you keep pasting the same background into chat after chat. Give each project short instructions saying what the job is and how to use the files, and add at least two reference files.
Priya created one project for staff announcements and one for interview preparation. The announcements project held the style guide, the depot list and three past announcements. The interview project held the current job descriptions and the firm's interview scoring sheet, and its instructions said to draft questions only from the job description and to mark any question about personal circumstances as one to remove.
Run one real task in each project to check that it works. Look in the output for signs that the files were used, such as correct depot names or questions tied to the actual job description.
If your plan doesn't offer projects, keep one document per job containing its instructions and files, and paste from it when you start that job. This is less convenient, but the content you give the assistant is the same as it would be in a project.
Open the memory or personalisation settings, as shown in lesson 6.3, "Memory: what it keeps and how to manage it", and read every saved item. Delete anything wrong, anything out of date, and anything you'd rather the assistant didn't keep. Then decide whether memory stays on, and write down your reason for that decision.
Priya kept memory on but deleted eleven of the nineteen saved notes, including a vegetarian preference, an old job title and two notes about her mother's health. She also set a reminder to review the memory list every two months.
A setup record is a one-page written record of your assistant setup, used to rebuild it in another assistant if you switch, or to restore it if something gets reset. Writing it is the step people skip, and it is the one that saves you work later. It contains four things:
your custom instructions, word for word each project's name, its instructions, its list of files, and where the master copy of each file lives your memory decision, with the date of your last review any other settings you changed along the way, such as data controls
It also helps to note where each setting sits in the menus, because you won't remember in six months. The record makes the comparison in lesson 8.3, "Run a fair side-by-side test", fairer, because you can give each assistant you compare the same setup.
Priya keeps her setup record as a note on her phone titled "Assistant setup", with the date at the top. Later, her company approved a different assistant for work, and she moved her whole setup across in under twenty minutes by copying from that note.
You're finished when your custom instructions have been tested on three real questions, you have two working projects each with instructions and reference files, your memory list has been reviewed with your decision about it written down, and your one-page setup record is clear enough that someone else could follow it to build the same setup.
Open your assistant's settings and begin with the custom instructions.
Write a one-page setup record with your custom instructions, the two projects and their files, and your memory settings.
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