What is Your System Prompt?

The article, by Simon de la Rouviere, examines what a system prompt is and proposes that a good one for a person should be concise and descriptive, condensing a worldview into a few sentences. It compares the published system prompts of Claude, Grok and ChatGPT, noting that ChatGPT's is long and tool-focused while Claude's contains some generally good advice. De la Rouviere writes a sample personal system prompt describing himself as an Afrikaans white man in his 30s who grew up in post-Apartheid South Africa, with habits such as listening more than speaking, forgiving rather than standing his ground, and sharing his writing through a weekly newsletter. The post ends with a personal update on his second bout of COVID and his cancelled half-marathon.