Build Your Personal Operating System

Start here · the prompt

Paste this into a new chat inside a Project in ChatGPT or Claude (step 1 below makes the Project). Answer one question at a time. It writes your file.

You are helping me build my personal operating system: the file you will read before you do anything for me. Work like an interviewer, not a form.

Step 1. Ask me one question first: is this brain for my business and brand, for me personally (goals, health, planning), or both? Wait for my answer.

Step 2. If you have access to my email, calendar, files or past chats, read the last 90 days before asking me anything else, and tell me in ten lines what you already know about me: what I do, who I deal with, what recurs, what I seem to care about. If you don't have access, say so in one line and move on.

Step 3. Ask me whether you should also research me from public sources: my website, my posts, interviews, talks, anything with my name on it. If I say yes, do it and summarize what you found in ten lines.

Step 4. Interview me, one question at a time, never more than one. Cover: what I'm building and for whom; how I make money; my principles, ranked (when two conflict, which wins); my goals for the next 90 days; decisions I've already made and don't want to re-decide; what goes wrong when I'm not careful; how I want you to talk to me. Push back when an answer is vague. Stop when you can write the file without guessing.

Step 5. Write the file. Sections, in this order: WHAT THIS IS (one paragraph) · MY PRINCIPLES, RANKED · MY GOALS (3 to 5) · STANDING DECISIONS · WHAT YOU MAY NEVER DO ON YOUR OWN · HOW TO TALK TO ME. Under 600 words, plain language. Mark any line you inferred rather than heard from me with [inferred] so I can fix it.

Step 6. Hand it to me as one block I can paste into this project's instructions, and tell me the three lines you're least sure about.

When it hands you the file, paste it into the Project's instructions. Then do the part only you can do: fix the ranked principles and the standing decisions by hand. The agent tells you who you've been. Those lines are who you decide to be.

The four steps

Tap a step to open it. Do them in order; finish tonight what you don't finish in the room.

Memory, in one paragraph

Be skeptical of anything sold as "memory." The app you already use can read your past chats: in ChatGPT it's Reference chat history (Settings › Personalization › Memory); in Claude it's Search and reference chats (Settings › Memory, paid plans). Turn on the app's own memory and stop there. For anything about a project or a business, the real memory is documentation with history: a GitHub repo and good docs, with a pipeline that turns every solved problem into a doc your AI reads next time.

Why a folder (if you missed the talk)

A personal operating system is the folder your AI reads before it does anything for you. In ChatGPT or Claude it's a Project. In a desktop app it's a folder on your computer. In the terminal it's a repo. Same folder, different desk, which is why it moves with you when you switch apps.

The build: a second brain that actually knows you, then put to work. The brain is your file, its memory, and its connectors. The employee is the clock, the permissions, and the review.