Your AI Instruction File

An instruction file is a short note your AI assistant reads before every conversation, so you stop re-explaining who you are and what you need. Coding tools call it AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md; chat tools call it custom instructions. It is the same idea: you write the rules, the assistant works inside them, and you check what it gives back.

Keep it under a page. Add a line to Part 6 every time the assistant gets something wrong.

1. 1.Who I am

   Your role, your field, what you teach or research, who your students are.

   Example: I am an Associate Professor of Music at the Lionel Hampton School of Music. I teach applied horn, brass techniques, music history, and a graduate research course.

   Your answer Or upload your answer (.txt or .md) Download this part (who-i-am.md)

2. 2.My vocabulary

   Terms that mean something specific in your field, and words you never want to see.

   Example: "Concert pitch" and "written pitch" are different things; always say which. Call them students, not learners.

   Your answer Or upload your answer (.txt or .md) Download this part (my-vocabulary.md)

   Optional: a sample of your writing. Pick one or two short pieces you wrote yourself, without AI, that sound the way you want to sound. Nothing about a student. The page notes the file in your instructions; you add the file itself to your assistant along with your note. For more on how you write, fill in the writing guide (writing-guide.md).

   Upload a writing sample

3. 3.How I want answers

   Length, format, tone. When to ask before assuming. Whether to cite sources.

   Example: Short answers first, detail on request. Ask me before you fill a gap. Name a source for every factual claim, or say plainly that you are not sure.

   Your answer Or upload your answer (.txt or .md) Download this part (how-i-want-answers.md)

4. 4.What you must never do

   The lines the assistant should not cross, even when asked nicely.

   Example: Never invent a citation, quotation, or page number. Never make a decision for me; show me the options. Never write in my voice to anyone without saying it is a draft.

   Your answer Or upload your answer (.txt or .md) Download this part (what-you-must-never-do.md)

5. 5.What never goes in here

   What you will not paste in. This one is a rule for you as much as for the assistant.

   Example: Nothing that identifies a student: names, ID numbers, grades, accommodations, anything from a student record (FERPA Guidelines). Nothing my institution classes as restricted.

   Your answer Or upload your answer (.txt or .md) Download this part (what-never-goes-in-here.md)

6. 6.What I have learned

   Start empty. Each time the assistant gets something wrong, add one line so it does not happen again.

   Example: Check every date against the calendar I gave you; do not compute days of the week yourself.

   Your answer Or upload your answer (.txt or .md) Download this part (what-i-have-learned.md)

Your note builds here as you type.

Going further? If you later build your own setup for an AI agent, each part can be its own file: use "Download this part" under each answer. And when you move to a coding agent, rename instruction-file.md to AGENTS.md. That is the open, tool-neutral name: Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot's coding agent, goose, and many others read it, and Claude Code reads it too when a folder has no CLAUDE.md, Claude's own name for the file.

What you type and upload stays in your browser. This page sends nothing anywhere; it remembers your answers on this computer until you clear them.

Paste it at the top of a new chat; that works in any assistant. To have it read every time, save it where your assistant keeps standing instructions:

• VandalChat (chat.uidaho.edu, on campus or the university VPN): there is no custom-instructions setting, so save your note as a file in My Documents, then choose it under My documents when you start a new chat.
• ChatGPT: custom instructions, in Settings. Free plans hold 1,500 characters and paid plans 5,000, so on a free plan keep parts 4 and 5 and trim the rest.
• Gemini: make a Gem (Explore Gems, then New Gem), paste your note in as its instructions, and save.
• Claude: a project's instructions, for one project, or your account-wide instructions in Settings, for every chat.

Give the assistant one real task from your week, once without your note and once with it. What changed? What still slipped?

This note is the beginning. It makes every chat start from your rules, in whatever assistant you use. When you want an assistant that also remembers a project from one session to the next, that is the next step, and free kits for it are coming to this site.

Extend; do not defer.

The instruction-file format: agents.md. Adding a line for every mistake: Mitchell Hashimoto, "My AI Adoption Journey," mitchellh.com/writing/my-ai-adoption-journey.