Interactive Learning
Test your knowledge across 3 games. You have 3 â¤ď¸ to complete the challenge.
Setting Rules
You picked who it is. You set it up. Now tell it how to act.
You've done a lot already.
You gave the AI a job. A role. You told it who the answer is for, what's going on, what to work from, and where you want to end up.
But there's still a gap.
The AI knows the job. It doesn't know how you want it done.
That's what a rule is. A rule is an instruction about how the AI behaves.
A rule controls the how, not the who or the what.
Think about the three things you've been stacking.
The role is who it is. The setup is the situation. The rule is how it should act inside that situation.
Same idea as a real person.
You can hire the best tutor in the world. That's the role. You can tell them your exam is Friday and you're stuck on chapter seven. That's the setup. But if you never say "go slow and make sure I actually get it," the tutor might just talk for an hour and walk out.
The rule is the "go slow and make sure I get it" part.
"be my
history tutor."
"one idea at a time, wait for me to say next."
Without rules, you get the AI's habits.
Here's the thing nobody tells you.
If you don't set rules, the AI doesn't do nothing. It does its defaults. And its defaults are predictable.
Long answers. Everything at once. A little hedging. The whole menu when you wanted one dish.
That's not the AI being dumb. It's built to give the most complete answer it can, to the widest possible person. So it pads. It over-explains. It covers every angle in case one of them was the one you needed.
Complete is not the same as useful.
A rule is how you cut the answer down to the one you actually wanted.
One cause at a time, wait for me to say next.
People bought stocks with borrowed money, and when the market dipped, everyone panicked and sold.
Say "next" when you're ready for Cause 2.
A good rule is specific and points one way.
A rule is a command. Do this. Don't do that.
Vague rules barely move it. "Keep it short" is a nudge. The AI has to guess what short means to you.
Specific rules actually land. "Answer in three sentences max." Now there's a wall it can't cross.
Same with the don'ts. "Don't use jargon" is decent. "Don't use words a 14-year-old wouldn't know" is better.
You're not being bossy. You're being clear. The AI can't read your mind. It can read your rules.
Rules are not your goal. They're how it gets there.
Quick one, because people mix these two up.
Your goal is what you want to walk away with. You learned that in the last layer. Your rules are how the AI should act on the way there.
Goal: I want to understand this chapter.
Rule: explain one idea at a time and stop to check I got it.
The goal is the destination. The rules are how it drives.
See it in action
Without a rule:
You get six paragraphs. Every cause. Every date. A pile of names. Technically correct. Completely overwhelming.
With a rule:
Now you get one clean idea. Then you drive.
Same tutor. Same question. The rules changed everything.
Takeaway
The role gives it an identity. The setup gives it context. The rules give it instructions.
Skip the rules and you get the AI's defaults: long, complete, and built for nobody in particular.
Set the rules and you get an answer built for you.
Next up
There are a few rules worth knowing by name. The ones that fix the problems you'll hit over and over.
The first one is the most common fix of all. It's how you get the AI to stop sounding like a textbook.
That's "Keep It Simple." Let's go.
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