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Tips for using the assistant ​

In the parlance of the domain, this is known as Prompt engineering and it's about iterating and testing prompts to optimize performance. Although you are interacting with an AI model when you use the assistant, for the sake of this documentation, it's helpful to think that you are giving directions to a colleague to perform work on your behalf.

So, if you had a folder of content that you wanted summarised you could write the following:

Prompt

Summarise.

And you would get a useful summary of the content.

However, by providing more context to the assistant you could get a better outcome. Consider the following examples:

Prompt

Summarise the selected files and provide a list of the main themes discussed. The summary should be 3 - 5 sentences long and contain not more than 100 words.

The general rule of thumb is to be more specific and provide as much guidance to the assistant as you can.

Another example; say you want to summarise the content for a specific audience.

Prompt

Summarise the documents using language appropriate for tertiary students. Explain the themes found in the content in a way that relates it to their stage of life.

Or maybe you want to explore how some content would look if it were being reported in a newspaper and was targeting a particular demographic:

Prompt

Write a news report based on the content of the selected documents. The target audience is minority groups struggling with cost of living pressures.

Include the key themes and how they relate to the target audience.`

One final example; extracting a citation for a set of papers:

Prompt

You are a researcher writing a paper for a journal. The citation format of the journal is very specific.

For each document in the set, extract the authors, title, and journalName of the paper. Provide the information as a list.

Notice that we are giving the assistant a role: "You are a researcher..."

The assistant can massively accelerate your workflow when prompted in the right way. The key is to keep refining what you ask for and how you ask for it. And don't forget, it's a conversation. As the conversation continues, the assistant will get better at finding the information you are looking for.

Go deeper ​

Prompt engineering is an art form in and of itself and rather than repeat the great work of others here, here's a couple of links to sites that can help you go further.