Make AI Tell You the Truth

A fill-in-the-blanks setup for turning any AI into a sharp thinking partner instead of a flatterer.

Most people get bland, agreeable answers from AI because they never tell it who they are or how to behave. This pack fixes that. Fill in the blanks below once, load it into your AI's settings, and every conversation starts from your context with the gloves off.

It works with Claude and ChatGPT. Claude is the recommended tool because it holds the full instructions without limits. ChatGPT works too, on a condensed version, covered below.

Want the fuller picture? Watch the AI Foundations workshop replay for a deeper understanding of how to use this resource.

Using Claude Cowork for file-based work too? Set Up Claude Cowork Properly gives it a memory and a folder system on top of this.

How it works

Your instructions have four jobs:

Tell the AI who you are, so its advice is relevant to your business, not generic.
Set the hard rules that stop it flattering you.
Decide when it goes deep, so it interrogates your strategy but not a request to format a table.
Give it a thinking framework, so it pressure-tests your reasoning instead of nodding along.

Fill in the fields below. The framework and hard rules are already written for you. As you type, your finished instructions build in the code block below. Then copy them into your AI's settings. You only do this once.

Fill in your details

Your name

Your full name.

What to call you

A name or nickname it should use.

Your role

What you are.

Your business

Its name and what it is.

Who you help

Your audience.

The result you deliver

What you actually create for them.

Your typical client

A sentence describing them.

Outside work optional

A few interests. Helps it read your tone.

Which English?

Spelling and phrasing. Most US and Canadian audiences want US English.

Your formatting rules

Pre-filled with a sensible default. Edit to taste.

Style and brand notes optional

Anything to apply to outputs: brand colours, fonts, house style.

File naming convention optional

How files should be named. Left blank, it drops out of your instructions entirely.

Your instructions

Anything still in [brackets] hasn't been filled in yet. Fill it, or delete it before you paste.

CLAUDE · PERSONAL PREFERENCES

How to load it

Claude (recommended)

Go to Settings, then your personal preferences (the box asking what Claude should know about you and how it should respond). Copy the Claude block above and paste it in as one block. Done once, it applies to every chat.

ChatGPT

Open Settings, then Personalization, then Customize ChatGPT. Paste the "About you" block into the field asking about your background, and the "How to respond" block into the field asking how ChatGPT should respond. Match by what each field asks for, the labels change over time.

Three things people get wrong

They leave brackets in. Anything still in [brackets] is a blank you haven't filled. Fill it or delete it before you paste.
They paste it into a chat instead of the settings. This goes in your AI's settings once, so it applies everywhere. In a single chat you'd redo it every time.
They never test it. Load it, start a fresh chat, and ask something you'd normally get a soft answer on. If it pushes back, it's working. If it still flatters you, make your hard rules blunter.

Want this built for you, not by you?

We run the whole LinkedIn system, profile, content, lead magnets, outreach, in your real voice. We only take on people we can get results for.

See if we're a fit