Why is the Character Limit for Custom Assistant Instructions Lower on OpenAI Playground?

GPT builders
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Hi everyone,

I’ve been an active GPT builder since the feature launched in 2023, primarily working within the OpenAI platform. Recently, I’ve become very interested in the custom Assistant functionality available in the OpenAI Playground, especially with all the new features and updates to the OpenAI API.

As I began experimenting with moving some of my GPTs to the Playground, I quickly noticed a significant limitation: the character limit for instructions on the Playground is only half of what’s allowed on the OpenAI website. This discovery has made me reconsider my decision to migrate some of my GPTs to the Playground.

Does anyone know why there’s such a discrepancy between the two platforms? Also, does OpenAI plan to increase the character limit for custom Assistant instructions on the Playground anytime soon to match that of the OpenAI website?

I believe this limitation is a significant barrier to fully utilizing the Playground’s potential.

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My two cents on this are that (1) more instructions will often not yield better outputs and can easily “overwhelm” the model and (2) unlike for custom GPTs which are covered under $20 monthly ChatGPT subscriptions, you pay by token when using the Assistant, decreasing the incentive for higher instruction limits.

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That’s very interesting. Do you really think detailed instructions (around 8,000 characters) could overwhelm the model? I haven’t noticed this before, but now I’m wondering if reducing the length of instructions could improve the efficiency of some of my GPTs.

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It really depends. Much is about how you structure your prompt and what it’s composed of. I’d personally keep the core of your instructions to a much smaller character count. However, if you include one or multiple examples to showcase the desired output in addition to the prompt, then longer instructions may absolutely work.

In many cases of (too) long prompts that I have seen, issues such a repetition of the same instructions and/or asking the model to complete too many things at the same time were present.

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