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Stumbled on a GPT prompt hack that saved me 3 hours of manual data entry this morning

I was stuck reformatting messy CSV exports from our old CRM, so I added a simple 'output as clean bullet points with dates' instruction and it nailed it first try, has anyone else found a random prompt tweak that just works?
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3 Comments
lucast81
lucast8121d ago
Whoa hold on, I gotta push back a little on calling it a "random tweak". That clean bullet points with dates line is doing way more work than you might think. If your CSV was real messy, the model needs a specific pattern to follow, not just a vague "clean this up" wish. I've seen people toss in "fix my data" and get garbage back, but if you tell it exactly what you want like "extract client names, dates, and amounts in a table with no extra text", it suddenly behaves. So it's less about randomness and more about finding that one precise instruction that snaps it into shape, you know?
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casey818
casey81821d ago
You said "random prompt tweak" - was that the only change you made or did you have to mess with the system prompt too to get it to format right?
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jenny_lane12
Three hours saved but did you check if it hallucinated any of those dates?
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