Ah, this is the disconnect. I don't have users. You're talking about creating an application; I'm talking about just using it to solve my own problems.
It's not that I don't realize that prompts like "you are a {whatever}" modify the output, it's that I'm skeptical that it does a better job of helping me solve my problems when I start out that way than it does when I just interactively ask it for what I want. I tried this kind of thing for awhile "you are an advanced planner assistant", but now I mostly just say "could you help me come up with a plan for XYZ?". So I've become somewhat skeptical that I'd see a difference if I tried to measure this for my own use somehow.
But thanks for the pointer to a tool! It might be interesting to see if I could make that work to measure my own intuitions better.
Ah yeah if it's not automated you have fewer issues, particularly with good models which require much less badgering.
What I would say is that there are probably common patterns that you use and building up prompts can save some time. There's a lot of woo around though as people just copy patterns they see. It may be as simple for you as coding with a few style examples and an explanation of your level (e.g. in typescript I want code examples and help with syntax, python I've used for decades so need only higher level pointers)
Promptfoo should fit that quite well, you can give it some prompts and run them all and see output (with caching thankfully).
GPTs, the custom ones now, are a little different in that you can also give them files to refer to. I've done that with example code for an internal-ish framework and it generates useful code from that.
Edit - I'd also invite you to think about places you could use them in a more automated way. I had some I want to resurrect with newer models where I can take a recording, send it through whisper, then from the transcript take out:
* Key points
* Give me counter arguments
* Critique my thinking
* If I talk about coding options give advice or write code to solve the problems
Ah, this is the disconnect. I don't have users. You're talking about creating an application; I'm talking about just using it to solve my own problems.
It's not that I don't realize that prompts like "you are a {whatever}" modify the output, it's that I'm skeptical that it does a better job of helping me solve my problems when I start out that way than it does when I just interactively ask it for what I want. I tried this kind of thing for awhile "you are an advanced planner assistant", but now I mostly just say "could you help me come up with a plan for XYZ?". So I've become somewhat skeptical that I'd see a difference if I tried to measure this for my own use somehow.
But thanks for the pointer to a tool! It might be interesting to see if I could make that work to measure my own intuitions better.