What's ChatGPT Projects and How to Use Them as a Writer?

The new Projects functionality just arrived in ChatGPT. Will it kill prompt engineering?

Image created by author with Midjourney

You start a new chat in ChatGPT about a topic or a use case, say for example you want to repurpose your articles intо social media posts. You set your instructions first. Then you start chatting.

But if you want to use that chat many times, ChatGPT will attach the entire chat history to every new prompt you submit.

The problem?

At some point it gets messy and responses start losing from their quality. The AI gets too much information and fails to get the initial instructions correctly.

The solution?

You have to start a new chat. Or create a custom GPT, which is an instance of ChatGPT trained to perform that same task every time. For this you’ll need some advanced prompt engineering knowledge to make it produce high quality results. Like for example my custom GPT trained to generate clickable headlines or viral Substack Notes.

But not anymore!

Now we have Projects!

Screenshot by author. Source: ChatGPT

Finally!

It’s the long-awaited functionality in ChatGPT to organize the chaos of chats.

When I first saw it, I thought it’s exactly what I needed before: a way to organize chats in folders by topic.

But it’s more than that!

It is a project!

Screenshot by author. Source: ChatGPT

Just like when you create a custom GPT, you have the option to add:

• files that serve as “knowledge base” of the AI

• instructions that tell the AI how to behave

Technically you can use it the exact same way as a Custom GPT!

But not entirely.

What’s the difference between a CustomGPT and Projects?

Projects help organize your work with ChatGPT.

For example, you can have a dedicated project for generating images, repurposing your articles, analyzing your writing stats, etc. All the chats in the projects (similar to custom GPTs) will have access to the files and instructions — this keeps the chats light and AI doesn’t get confused.

Custom GPTs were initially intended to generate revenues to their builders from a revenue sharing model with OpenAI.

Yes, but…

Screenshot by author. Source: OpenAI — here and here

So until this gets public, the differences between Projects and CustomGPTs are really small.

But important.

Here’s what I mean:

1. In custom GPTs you can build small integrations with external platforms. This adds to the functionality of the GPT. You can’t do that in Projects. And you do need some tech skills to do that.

2. In custom GPTs you’re able to customize whether OpenAI can use your data for training or not. You can’t do that in Projects.

3. In projects you can organize your chat history. You can’t do that with Custom GPTs.

4. Last but not least: you still CAN monetize your GPTs. You can build them but not publish them in the GPT store. Instead you set them as “Invite-only” and sell access to them. Projects on the other hand is just a feature you can personally use but cannot share with other people.

Will Projects kill prompt engineering?

No.

I don’t think so.

You can do so much more than just a project within the UX of ChatGPT:

• build your own instance of ChatGPT to make them write like you

• integrate it in other platforms to build automations for example automatically transform your article into a social media post and publish it on our social media profile

• create custom programs like for exmaple Chrome extentions and so much more.

Projects are for better personal use of ChatGPT.

Prompt engineering is a skill every writer and content creator needs to know to stay competitive in the new normal of the Creator economy.

Bottom line

Projects make our experience within ChatGPT better.

Custom GPTs allow us to build more advanced GPT instances.

If you know prompt engineering, build your custom GPTs.

Or ask me to build it for you ;)

Thanks for reading!

Yana

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