Tell Copilot who you are
Before any of these lessons, give Copilot a foundation. Custom instructions are a short description of who you are, what you do, and how you think. You write them once and Copilot carries them into every conversation automatically. No re-explaining your role. No re-establishing your context. It already knows.
Step 0
Do this once. Everything after works better.
Most people skip this step. Most people also wonder why their AI outputs feel generic.
This prompt writes your custom instructions for you. Answer honestly. It takes five minutes.
Custom instructions setup flow
Do this in Copilot
Save your custom instructions in Copilot Settings before you open Lesson 1.
Paste this into Copilot Chat and work through it before moving on.
Your foundation prompt
I want to set up custom instructions so you know who I am before we work together. Ask me five questions, one at a time, that would help you understand: who I am professionally, what I'm responsible for, how I like to communicate, what good work looks like in my role, and what I'm trying to get better at right now. After I answer all five, write my custom instructions in the first person, as if I'm describing myself to a new AI assistant. I'll review them, edit anything that doesn't sound right, and then save them in my Copilot settings.
- Clarifying questions
- In Copilot, go to Settings and look for Personal preferences or Custom instructions. Paste what you wrote. Done.
- Come back and update them when your role changes, your priorities shift, or you just know yourself better than you did when you wrote the first version.
Did you run this in Copilot? Mark complete when you have tried it.
RecordedNavigate: press j for next lesson, k for previous.