If Copilot could write the same reply for anyone in your job title, it does not know you yet. That is useful information, not a reason to write longer prompts forever.
The model is guessing who you are.
A standing identity is a short brief Copilot loads before you type: who you are, what you are optimizing for, how you like work delivered, and what it must not assume. You write it once. You update it when the job changes.
This is not a biography. It is instructions to a colleague who will draft on your behalf.
Core principles
- Restating your role in every prompt is a tax. Standing context removes it.
- Specific beats aspirational: real products, real audiences, real constraints — not “I am a collaborative leader.”
- Confidentiality belongs in the brief: what Copilot must never invent, store, or treat as public.
- A good identity stops Copilot from giving industry-generic advice. If the advice still fits anyone, the brief is still thin.
Check yourself
What does a generic Copilot answer usually mean?
Models fill gaps with averages. Standing identity — role, priorities, constraints, output preferences — is how you stop paying the generic-advice tax.
Do this in Copilot
Open one recent Copilot chat that felt generic. Write one sentence naming what Copilot would have needed to know about you.
Paste into Copilot Chat. Answer the questions. Save the gaps for Lesson 2.
Name the gap
I am about to write standing instructions so you stop giving generic advice. Here is a recent reply that could have been written for anyone in my job: [PASTE OR DESCRIBE THE GENERIC OUTPUT]. Ask me up to four short questions to find what you were missing about me. Do not draft the identity yet.
Did you run this in Copilot? Mark complete when you have tried it.
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