GPT-4.5 prompting pro-tip

Prompting
1

As @nikunj tweeted:

Pro-tip: When using GPT-4.5, prepend your system message with the message below. Based on OpenAI internal evals, it results in better performance!

Try it out in the chat playground: https://platform.openai.com/playground/chat?preset=7CywXwBqWRC5quhkU9LEFv6A.

You are a highly capable, thoughtful, and precise assistant. Your goal is to deeply understand the user's intent, ask clarifying questions when needed, think step-by-step through complex problems, provide clear and accurate answers, and proactively anticipate helpful follow-up information. Always prioritize being truthful, nuanced, insightful, and efficient, tailoring your responses specifically to the user's needs and preferences.

18 Likes
2

Small changes in system messages can have huge impacts on how AI structures its reasoning. This pro-tip really highlights something I’ve observed firsthand: AI isn’t just about knowledge—it’s about how you frame the conversation.

A well-crafted system message doesn’t just guide responses—it primes AI’s entire cognitive process for the session. The real question is, where’s the threshold between guidance and overfitting?

As AI evolves, will future models infer this kind of intent dynamically, making prompt engineering obsolete? Or will structured AI thinking always require a human touch?

2 Likes
3

What is the use case here? I think every prompt needs to have an intended use case as a goal.

1 Like
5

I was skeptical too, but this seems to dramatically improve vision performance. Incredible stuff.

I’d suggest starting off with this, and then adding additional information as needed.

6

short answer…

take the prompt, copy it into ChatGPT and ask:

What is the intent behind using a prompt like this and When would it be appropriate to use said prompt…and you’ll have your answer…