Teach AI to Do a Task Your Way
Set it up once, in plain English, and it does the job your way every time. No code.
Paste this into ChatGPT or Claude
I want to teach you how to do one of my regular tasks the way I like it, so you can do it the same way every time. Start by asking me what the task is. Then interview me to understand it properly — one question at a time — about how I do it: the steps, what a good version looks like, what to avoid, and anything you'd need to get it right. When you've got enough, have a go at the task, and we'll go back and forth and refine it together until I'm happy with how it turns out. Then write the whole thing up as a clear, reusable set of instructions — a skill — that I can save and use whenever I need this task done again.
Copy it straight in — it'll ask what you want to set up, interview you one question at a time, work through it with you until it's right, then write it up as a reusable version you can save. The rest of this page is what to do with it.
The idea
Left to its own devices, AI rarely does the same job the same way twice. Ask for something today, you get one version; ask tomorrow, you get a different one — and you end up re-explaining what you wanted every single time.
The fix is to teach it once. You show it how you like a task done, save that, and from then on it does the job your way without you starting from scratch. Think of it like training a new starter — you explain it properly one time, and never have to again. No code involved.
The no-code way — start here
Get it right once, in a normal chat
Do the task with ChatGPT or Claude the way you would anyway — the report, the client email, the summary. Go back and forth until the output is genuinely how you'd want it. That good version is what you're about to lock in.
Ask it to write up how it did it
Say: "Write up exactly how you did that as a clear set of instructions I can reuse — the steps, what a good version looks like, what to avoid." You now have your reusable recipe, in plain English.
Save it so it's always there
The simplest version: keep those instructions in a note and paste them at the start of a chat whenever you need the task. The tidier version: drop them into a Custom GPT (ChatGPT) or a Project (Claude) — both let you save instructions once so the assistant always follows them, no pasting. (These live on the paid tiers.)
Use it, and tweak it
Next time, you just ask for the task and it does it your way. If something's off, tell it what to change and update the saved instructions. It gets sharper every time you use it.
Good first ones
- -Turning messy meeting notes into the summary you'd actually send
- -A client update or email, in your tone and your format
- -A proposal or report, structured the way your company likes them
- -Your weekly update, laid out the way your boss actually reads it
- -Anything you've explained to the AI more than twice
If you use Claude Code — the more powerful version
Already working in Claude Code? The same idea has a stronger form: a skill. Do a task the way you want, then say "save this as a skill" — Claude writes a SKILL.md (a plain text file with a name, a description, and the steps) and saves it for you.
The clever part is the description: Claude reads it and reaches for the skill itself whenever a job matches, so you don't have to remember it's there. Save it to ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or .claude/skills inside a project to share it with your team.
One honest note
This won't make the output identical every single time — it's still AI, following a recipe rather than replaying a recording. What it does do is stop it freelancing: same approach, same standard, without you re-explaining. And it only works as well as your instructions — if the result drifts, the fix is almost always to make them clearer, not to give up on the idea.