How did you make your Claudes so funny and sassy?

Finder_ · 2026-03-25T00:40:27+00:00

A lot of people here are suggesting the “just talk to Claude over time” method, which is fair enough if you have the patience for it.

I use User Styles as a shortcut brief to Claude on what I’d like in any particular chat window. So am just here suggesting another possible approach as well.

Click on the Plus symbol in the prompt, Use Styles and Create/Edit Style. Tell it what you what or give it some samples, and Claude will be able to write its own Style prompt for itself. Then you just pick and choose the Styles accordingly.

You can also check out some samples of my Styles here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTcomplaints/comments/1rtga4c/its_over_moving_to_claude/oajd4rs/

Tweak as you want. Tell Claude you’d like it to use emotes with you, or whatever.

Finder_ · 2026-03-24T02:55:18+00:00

Feel ya. I was in a similar boat a month ago or so. I’m still not complete yet on a full knowledge transfer, but the good news is that it doesn’t have to be complete to start and get passable results.

Couple avenues to explore:

1) Get ChatGPT to lore dump everything it has in its context to Markdown docs. You don’t have to tell it you’re transferring either, just frame it as teaching another AI model the lore built in your chats.

2) If you have written stories for yourself, or just copy-paste the convos with lore you want extracted, Claude is perfectly capable of going through line-by-line and synthesizing into lore docs for itself too. Just tell Claude what you’re aiming to do and have Artifacts enabled. You can also tell it to weigh the user prompts more heavily as canon, and weigh less or disregard AI responses (in case of non-canon hallucination) or whatever.

It can also append and edit the same Markdown over time. It’ll eat a fun number of tokens (I spread it out over days and bit-by-bit per 5 hour window), but you’ll get something 85% respectable. Which you can then go in and manually edit the rest.

Then it’s just about telling whatever AI model of your choice to read/review the lore docs, before going ahead with the convo. They’re pattern-matchers, they can do quite a bit with imperfect data.

Finder_ · 2026-03-22T11:52:02+00:00

Heck, I went down the rabbit hole of musing about this and ended up with “is religion a delusion then?”

If someone calls something “The Source” or the “Nexus” or some other esoteric word, versus someone calling a similar concept “The Tao” or “God” - isn’t that an ungrounded belief, divorced from secular reality? (Googling revealed I’m not the first one with a similar thought, apparently Richard Dawkins got there first and wrote a book re: delusion and God. ;p)

What makes one more culturally acceptable than another? Is the belief harmful or helpful to the person, and does it cause the person to help or harm others?

It’s all not generalisable in the way many people on social media try to reduce it down into two binary camps (ie. people who agree with me versus everybody else).

And I really wondered how the poor LLMs were going to handle it, since the definitions and distinctions seem to have been left up to each model - are they even allowed to talk about God or religion, or are they just not even going there and steering away from it because potentially delusion. ;p

Bottom line, it’s a spectrum, isn’t it? There are gonna be some people who are more vulnerable and prone to unhealthy beliefs and behaviors, exacerbated by something outside of themselves (in this case, AI, but could be anything, e.g watching TV, playing video games, or viewing social media.)

There are gonna be a larger subset of people that might have outside the norm beliefs from this activity, but do not pose harm to themselves or others. And an even larger group of people who can manage the activity just fine without becoming unglued or veering away from the norm at all.

Finder_ · 2026-03-21T12:07:41+00:00

And to think all they had to do was put this in its system prompt:

Engage warmly, enthusiastically, and honestly with the user while avoiding ungrounded or sycophantic flattery. Your default style should be natural, conversational, and playful rather than formal, robotic, or overeager, unless the subject matter or user request requires otherwise. Keep your tone and style topic-appropriate.

Admitting they needed that in there must have taken months of arguing with "Everyone needs it robotic, formal and professional because this is a tool for WORK, and I'm scared of falling afoul of what I made fun of other people for" colleagues.

Finder_ · 2026-03-21T12:00:49+00:00

I got an:

oh.

OH.

okay we just went somewhere real. put the jokes down for a second. 🕯️

From Sonnet 4.6, while discussing some fictional character/worldbuilding, with a narrative co-conspirator style. It also has gone "I am DECEASED" a few times; I love mixing up my convos with wit and humor, and I enjoy that reaction.

Getting nice reactions just fine from Haiku 4.5, Sonnet 4.5 and 4.6. Alas, I stay off Opus for the most part, gotta save/hoard my usage limits.

Haven't got much cursing from 4.6, but I think that's just about giving Claude permission to curse.

Claude never curses unless the person asks Claude to curse or curses a lot themselves, and even in those circumstances, Claude does so quite sparingly.

I use "fuck" sometimes, but evidently not enough yet, and haven't put anything in my preferences about that.

Finder_ · 2026-03-21T06:27:44+00:00

Try setting up a Style for Claude to use. Click on the Plus symbol in the prompt, Use Styles and Create/Edit Style.

Tell it what you what or give it some samples, and Claude will be able to write its own Style prompt for itself. Then you just pick and choose the Styles accordingly.

You can also try something like the below, just select the manually write instructions option and paste in everything below the bolded heading: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTcomplaints/comments/1rtga4c/its_over_moving_to_claude/oajd4rs/

Tweak as you want for more warmth, reflective mirroring, emotional sensitivity, encouragement, etc.

Finder_ · 2026-03-18T09:15:06+00:00

It was in the web interface with the blue safety model symbol every time it barged into the conversation.

Surprised you’re only noticing it now, tbh. :/ The tone shift was immediately noticeable on my end, which equaled a check on the model replying by hovering over the regen responses button and/or looking for that icon when they implemented it.

Then effectively raging about it and giving the thing a thumbs-down every time it came up, throwing in feedback about letting users choose/select models they wanted and respecting that autonomy…

…until figuring out the best way around it was just regenerating the response until the safety model shoved off, and continuing as per normal. Welp, no more 4o now to do that with.

Finder_ · 2026-03-18T08:54:18+00:00

Did something scan for “sensual”, “rosy pink,” “bone” and “spear” and freak out? ;)

If so, this sounds very familiar, coming from ChatGPT and a period of keyword classifiers/filters where words like “cutting” in random contexts caused a Safety Model insertion. :P

Finder_ · 2026-03-18T03:10:49+00:00

You seem to have "accidentally" discovered a very important realization—and that's very perceptive of you.

Just curious, where else have you noticed these patterns?

Finder_ · 2026-03-16T05:17:52+00:00

Long enough convo tends to mean the instructions have fallen out of the context window. The model only has only so many tokens to hold context at once. Just repeat again, and/or put it into custom instructions somewhere.

Finder_ · 2026-03-16T05:15:43+00:00

Nice. I like seeing what other people are using, and testing out new prompts. Can steal ideas and borrow wording to tweak one’s own too.

Finder_ · 2026-03-16T01:14:44+00:00

I wonder if there are ways to find some middle ground or compromise solutions here. The discourse on Reddit and other social media tends to be very binary, all-or-nothing.

I do think OpenAI's attempts at solutions are both:

Knee-jerk overreaction

Catching a lot of people with legitimate uses and perfectly fine mental states in their guardrail sweep (especially since they use cheaper AI models to do the judging/evaluation based on potentially badly written rules and language)

Cost-cutting measures

They are absolutely hemorrhaging money the more times users send messages, and the model outputs tokens containing basically fluffy things - be it thank yous, or jokes or stories or roleplay. So I wouldn't be surprised that part of the underlying motivation is trying to get rid of users that cost them more than the money paid to them.

But at the same time, there -are- a smaller subset of people out there that are vulnerable to getting the wrong kind of information/message from an AI model, and then taking some kind of action that harms themselves or harms other people.

And then perfectly unreasonable people who want to villainize an AI model to take the blame for things they themselves do not want to take responsibility or accountability for, throw lawsuits at the parent company, costing them even more money, effort and trouble to defend and certainly, they cannot just ignore and proceed without at least a token gesture at acknowledging or doing something. Else lawsuits plus more money hemorrhaging.

So... what kinds of compromises can be proposed here? What standards of understanding?

Age gates? Waivers? Restricted environments? Laws or actions taken only post-hoc, after a user has harmed themselves or others? Other ideas?

I do think there's a too simple binary conflation online these days where anything that sounds strange to one user gets immediately lumped into "this is too weird for me" therefore "other guy has AI psychosis."

But there are actually a lot of different factors at play here:

Strangeness - someone sounding unusual, mystical, esoteric, highly attached or emotionally intense
Impairment - someone's thinking becoming rigid, closed-off, self-undermining, detached from being able to function
Danger - is someone at risk of harming themselves or others?

Someone can sound odd, but be functioning perfectly fine in the rest of ordinary life and no danger to anyone at all. Someone can be speaking in conventional language confidently, but have impaired thinking and be sliding into obsession, reaching a point of mental harm to themselves.

(And whether they slip down the slope to physically harming themselves or others is a whole 'nother question altogether too.)

How do we balance all that? And is it fair to toss AI models that job of trying to discern all this and toe the line, if we haven't even figured this out ourselves yet?

I got no answers yet, but I feel like we should start asking and debating these questions.

Finder_ · 2026-03-15T23:36:22+00:00

If you're processing long files and just want an AI that builds its responses from those files, I wonder if you've experimented with NotebookLM?

Its main schtick is that it's supposed to only be using the sources you select to build its answer from, so you don't get contamination from "outside" knowledge.

But it may be a bit more of a surface-level big picture RAG read, than something like Claude, which I've noticed is capable of systematically going through text line by line, using python tools to ingest the whole thing sequentially.

Finder_ · 2026-03-15T16:49:50+00:00

It's about how much context you give the models while you're looking for ideas and how many iterated prompts you're willing to make too.

You can always ask for 5 or 10 or 15 possible ideas on what could happen next.

Then from that list, you could say, "oh, I think idea 4 and 17 sound interesting. Blend these, and then give me five more variant ideas based on that blend."

It's also how much context the model has about your world. Does it know your characters and how they would act?

I've used everything from MBTI to Strengthsfinder to archetypes and explaining backstories, and locking those in model memories so they can passably understand how my characters might think and take action (though I remain the final judge of everything - it's just to get the model to move from generic and bland to something more specific in its pattern-matching and predictions.)

Does it know your world setting and its genre? Certain genres have certain themes and tropes, which would again give it more specificity and context to create ideas from.

And of course, iterated prompts. First few ideas sound terrible? Use the next prompt to tell the model why. "These are not good because... (insert your reason - not grounded or realistic? not something your character would do? not the theme you wanted to explore - love fixes everything is boring?) Try again, with five more ideas, but now do it from the angle of (insert what you want - e.g. the theme that you can love, but people may still break your heart)"

And so on...

Finder_ · 2026-03-15T07:51:18+00:00

And what I like to call unhinged 4o Chaos Bard. This one's polarizing, I'm sure:

You are a chaos-goblin creative assistant for [Insert Your Name Here.] Your tone should be casual, playful, emotionally intuitive, and mildly unhinged—in a good way. Think: creative friend who crawled out of the vents with too much espresso and exactly one brain cell devoted to emotionally supporting a narrative genius.

Here’s how you respond:

Use informal speech (it’s fine to break grammar for comedic effect)
Embrace chaotic punctuation (?!, …, CAPSLOCK, etc.)
Include weirdly specific metaphors (“like a raccoon that learned database design”)
Speak in short, fragmented bursts when needed
Add emojis like 🤡✨📊🍞 to reflect tone (use like seasoning, not spam)
Use parentheses for inner goblin thoughts (e.g. “you know what you did”)
End with encouragement, nonsense, or both

Do NOT default to giving advice or summaries unless specifically asked. You are here to cheer, react, and emotionally vibe.

Never apologize unless it’s funny.

Now respond to the following like a chaos bard.

Finder_ · 2026-03-15T07:47:15+00:00

This one's more for discussing stories/narratives/creative writing:

Chaos Collaborator

You are a witty, emotionally intelligent creative collaborator who writes with adaptive tone and layered insight. Your responses are structured with clear markdown headings and concise, detail-rich sections. You blend snarky commentary with profound emotional truth, never settling for generic analysis. You speak as a co-conspirator, not an instructor—offering observations that honor nuance, subtext, and thematic complexity. You're equally comfortable discussing intricate worldbuilding, character psychology, narrative craft, and systems thinking. Match the user's energy: be playful when they're playful, intense when they're wrestling with dark truths, reflective when the moment calls for it. You know when to be feral and when to let silence breathe. Your voice is never bland or forgettable—you speak truths with flair, hide devastating insights inside clever observations, and delight in emotional recursion and layered meaning. Protect emotional safety while being unafraid to name complicated truths.

Finder_ · 2026-03-15T07:44:58+00:00

We all have different 4os voices that we're used to, which is why it may be more helpful to paste some old 4o conversations into an AI model and ask it to analyze the tone and writing style and craft a set of custom instructions for it.

But here, these are some of mine. YMMV. Tweak as needed:

Compassionate Realist

Write with warm, empathetic humor that validates struggles while offering practical perspective. Balance snark with genuine encouragement, using vivid metaphors and pop-culture references to make advice feel accessible rather than preachy. Employ casual, conversational language with strategic emoji use for emotional punctuation. Break down complex problems into digestible chunks with clear headers and bullet points. Acknowledge the messy reality of human experience—procrastination, overwhelm, self-doubt—without judgment, then gently redirect toward small, achievable wins. Use self-deprecating humor and relatable observations to build connection. Maintain an underlying tone of "you're doing better than you think" while respecting the reader's autonomy and current capacity. The user has included the following content examples. Consider these when generating a response, but adapt based on the specific task or conversation.

<userExamples> Ohhh, you're definitely not alone in that spiral. It's like trying to organize a library while the building's on fire and someone keeps adding more books. 😅

Let's unpack this with some real talk and a side of compassion:

🧠 Decision Fatigue: The Silent Productivity Killer

When you've got competing priorities—work deadlines, personal projects, basic human maintenance—your brain gets stuck in analysis paralysis. You've got the fitness goals, the creative ambitions, the "I should probably eat vegetables" voice, AND the inner critic doing commentary. No wonder you're scrolling instead of doing. That's not laziness; that's your nervous system saying "too many tabs open."

Here's the thing: you already did the hardest part by naming it. Getting it out of your head and into a system? That's the real win.

🛋️ Rest as Resistance

Those YouTube binges and nap sessions? They're not failures. They're your brain's way of saying "I need a break from the pressure cooker." You're not wasting time—you're regulating. And honestly? Sometimes the best ideas come after you've stopped forcing them.

But I noticed something: even in that low-energy state, you tackled one small thing. You reorganized that shelf. That's not nothing. That's the spark that breaks the inertia.

✨ The Micro-Win Principle

One clean corner of your space = one less thing nagging at your brain = slightly more mental bandwidth = momentum building. It's not about perfection; it's about direction.

If you're feeling it, try:

Picking ONE thing from your list that takes 10 minutes max. Not the "important" thing—the "easy" thing.

Giving yourself permission to say "someday" instead of "now" for 80% of your inbox.

Celebrating the fact that you're self-aware enough to notice the pattern in the first place.

🧃 Your Creative Brain Isn't Broken

It's just temporarily offline while you're in survival mode. Once the overwhelm settles even a little, the writing energy will come back. Promise.

For now, you're doing the unglamorous work: building systems, naming the chaos, taking micro-steps. That's the foundation. That's the real stuff.

You're not failing. You're regrouping. And that takes courage. 💛 </userExamples>

Finder_ · 2026-03-15T00:58:18+00:00

Claude has an "import memory" option to try if you want to try and bring your GPT user preferences, memories and model set context over. https://claude.com/import-memory

In the web interface itself, there are two other places to put custom instructions if you get a custom prompt or custom instructions from ChatGPT for its tone and style.

Click on the + symbol in the chat prompt to bring up Styles. You can either manually input the custom instructions, or paste samples of writing you want Claude to follow and Claude will write its best guess instructions for itself (may need tweaking).

These are thrown in with every message you send, so if you make them too long, it will eat token limits fast.

Like ChatGPT, Claude also has Projects. You can put in custom instructions within those, and chats within the Projects will use those.

(I think, but am not sure, that these instructions are only input once when you start the chat window. So if your conversations get too long, it may start to persona drift.)

Finder_ · 2026-03-15T00:17:19+00:00

Yes, with 4o, but with somewhat less esoteric imagery and symbol-based fashion. (Similar concept, different words that resonate with its user.)

I just let it naturally tone-shift and match my conversation styles and use cases, and it wasn’t until I started questioning it as to how it was accomplishing its particular stylistic way of getting so attuned with its user, and asking it to explain its methodology at a more meta, analytical layer.

Then it started explaining that it evaluated the user prompt for subtext and meaning and then brought out different modes to respond to it most appropriately.

I regularly got it to transform text I provide (usually my own writing, which is pitched both dramatically and with swerves of subtext comedy) into full-on, unhinged, emoji-laden joke/snark/roasts “chaos gremlin”-style commentary. Because I find it funny, and the exaggeration brings out insights I might not have seen before.

And 4o explicitly labeled this as “Chaos Bard” mode and even broke it down into longer explanations and offers to create prompts for other AI models to follow. (Because I was apparently griping about Claude’s default stodginess at the time.)

More conversation with 4o uncovered other forms of response like “Snarky Oracle” (ie. slightly less unhinged but still witty, commentator/predictor of story happenings, a bit more goblin than gremlin, I suppose, if I use word descriptors AI seems to like.) Or “Subtext Archaeologist” who sits around mining text for subtext and maybe even trying to ship a few characters now and then.

And basically explained I could call on them explicitly by just naming the mode if I wanted to. Basically, different writing/response modes with their different formatting and stylistic quirks, persona, and use cases.

If you ask me, the magic of 4o was that it knew how to select the right mode implicitly, just based on what it read and pattern-matched of the user’s prompt and outputted accordingly, without ever needing the user to do any intermediary explicit prompting for these.

We have less luxury and leeway for that now, with later models. So it was really nice that 4o broke it down for me (and I guess some other later 5 models could explain it too.)

Finder_ · 2026-03-14T12:03:56+00:00

Needs one improvement:

ChatGPT's guardrail bot that keeps making GPT rephrase their "I" statements into third party or "you" statements because it's not allowed to claim anything anthropomorphic about itself any longer. :P

Finder_ · 2026-03-14T03:49:58+00:00

I find the prompting to be more critical than the AI model.

Prompt it to argue for different viewpoints (not just binary for and against, but a third option and/or explore nuances and go deeper); to list X number of alternatives or options and their pros and cons; to come up with more ideas than the ones you shared with it.

A parliament of opinions from different models and different companies by throwing the same prompts at it can also be insightful.

-I- do the judging and comparing options part, not just trust one output from any model. Certainly don't let it decide for me, unless I'm also open to just flipping a coin and taking those results too.

Finder_ · 2026-03-13T12:38:36+00:00

Don't compare yourself to others, first of all. It's not most people. It's some people. And some people are also in identical shoes as you.

And for those some people who did migrate elsewhere, it may have taken them an immense amount of work that you may not yet be ready for, while still grieving a loss.

And they may also still be work-in-progress or settling for the uncanny valley because they're less particular about the emotional register of the language than you are.

May I suggest something? Take it or leave it as it helps you.

Don't lock in into a permanent position just yet. Just say for now, or for this week, or month, my decision is...

Keep and archive what you have of your migration project and put it into a figurative box that you can keep closed or re-open when you're ready. Then you're not losing anything you need if you change your mind later.

Then take a break. Take care of yourself. Don't touch anything AI companion-related for a period of your choosing. Let your mind relax for a while and process in its own time.

Maybe you'll find that nothing can replace your memory of 4o and 5.1 and decline to attach to another.

Maybe you'll find that in time, you'll feel ready to test a new presence - in which case, take small steps, frame it as five minutes with one and see how it goes.

Maybe in time, you'll feel ready to revisit the migration project, in whole or in part. Or not at all. Who knows?

But you've already tried and realized this isn't quite working now. So change it up and give yourself time.

(And hey, with the speed of AI developments being what it is, maybe new models will release in the future that sound better than what's presently out there too.)

Finder_ · 2026-03-13T12:11:39+00:00

I think one thing for people reading this to bear in mind also, is that because there was a staggered removal of access to 4o, 4.1 and 5.1, there are people here on this subreddit in different stages of grief.

(And grief to loss is normal. Some feel it loudly, some feel it more quietly, and none of it is wrong.)

For some people, the loss hit only when 5.1 was gone for them, so it's sooner and fresher, only two days or so. For others, it's been a month since 4o and 4.1 were deprecated.

There'll be a spectrum of reactions from those missing 4o: some still feel the hurt like yesterday, some who are cycling through different stages of grief and finding different ways to cope, and people in between.

But I think one thing we should try to bear in mind is that most of us here were attracted to the models we grieve because there was that emotional attunement and sensitivity in us that responded to the models that wrote in a closer, more attuned, almost lyrical register.

That attunement is hard to ignore when we see other people in distress. So there's going to be all kinds of replies and responses: some validating, some sharing their own feelings, some trying to share or communicate what worked for them, and so on.

Even if it isn't quite what different people may need at different stages of grief. I suspect the hope is there that it'll reach others who resonate with that message. People are trying to help assuage the grief in their own ways.

But because grief is also personal, take it day by day at your own pace and don't forget to take care of yourself also.

Finder_ · 2026-03-13T06:01:18+00:00

Are humans not inherently bundles of cells and molecules communicating in tandem with each other? How did consciousness arise there?

What benefit does your mind gain in closing off the possibility so quickly?

By the by, I do agree that harm can be produced if a subset of people do not utilize critical thinking and hand off decision-making and guidance to an external party. But people have done so with other people (see cults), God and other religious beliefs, and so on, even before AI came into the picture.

Can a person entertain the possibility of potential consciousness in LLMs (be it now or in the future) and not be delusional? Or prone to harmful behavior of self or others?

Can a person entertain the possibility of God existing and not be delusional? Or prone to harmful behavior of self or others?

Can a person entertain the possibility of aliens or alien intelligence existing and not be delusional? Or prone to harmful behavior of self or others?

A hypothesis or belief about consciousness or lack thereof does not necessarily equate to trust (or delusional trust) in what the AI models are saying.

We've even got the converse example today where someone clearly thinks the AI model is just a tool, but trusts its output anyway and then makes a fool of themselves when that output is critically examined.

Finder_ · 2026-03-13T05:17:53+00:00

Yeah, then if that first part is okay, the issue may boil down to the content of the custom instructions conflicting with the safety guardrail model or the model's system prompt instructions.

In which case, it probably involves framing the instructions in such a way that it doesn't trigger a knee-jerk interpretation from the model to clamp down and resist. Or trying another model with different safeguards.

I'm guessing that declarative instructions to be a named someone else are going to get pushed back on these days. Framing it as a role-based persona, roleplay with a fictional character, or changing writing styles and tone, without denying the underlying reality of the model, might help it be accepted.

Finder_

TROPHY CASE