The Prompt Pub A place where i do talk about my experience with prompting, and where to discover a bit about me!

Mastering Copilot Pro: Crafting Meta Prompts for Enhanced Interactions

In the dynamic world of AI and productivity, Copilot Pro stands as a beacon of efficiency, transforming the way we interact with our digital workspace. But to truly harness its power, understanding and utilizing meta prompts is key… But what.. What’s a meta prompt?

Meta Prompts Unveiled

Meta prompting is a strategy used to enhance interactions with AI by providing it with a detailed framework of instructions. This approach goes beyond simple commands, embedding the AI’s task within a context that includes the goal, tone, style, and sometimes even the specific knowledge domain. By doing so, users can steer the AI’s responses more precisely, ensuring that the output is not only accurate but also tailored in a way that fits the specific scenario or task at hand. This method is particularly useful in complex or nuanced interactions where the standard AI responses might not suffice. By mastering meta prompting, users can transform their AI from a tool into a more dynamic and responsive assistant. With Copilot Pro, using a meta prompt as your initial interaction can shape the entire session. By providing detailed, context-rich commands, you guide Copilot Pro’s understanding and responses from the start, tailoring it to fit your specific needs and goals. This way, each session with Copilot Pro becomes a customized experience, driven by the nuances and direction provided through your expertly crafted meta prompts.

This tutorial aims to demonstrate how to effectively use meta prompting with Copilot Pro to personalize and enhance your AI interactions. Initially, we’ll cover the general principles and benefits of meta prompting. Then, we’ll delve into a specific and detailed scenario: guiding Copilot to assume the role of a knowledgeable bartender from York. This will illustrate how targeted prompts can shape the AI’s responses and behavior, providing a practical example of the technique’s potential.

The key aspect of a meta-prompt

In this section, I’ll guide you through creating your first meta prompt. Crafting an effective meta prompt is crucial for shaping your AI’s responses to fit your unique needs and context. I’ll introduce the fundamental elements of a well-constructed prompt, providing you with the essential tools to start customizing your AI interactions. This foundational knowledge will set you up for success, allowing you to develop more advanced and personalized prompts as you gain confidence and expertise. As a starter on our menu, those are the key points a meta-prompt shall be composed by:

Objective: Start with the clear aim of the interaction.
Tone: Define the desired approachability or formality.
Knowledge: Specify any particular expertise needed.
Context: Include any relevant details or background information.
Expectations: Clarify the desired outcome or type of response.

Meta Prompting our bartender

Now, let’s imagine we want to interact with Copilot to have a buddy to discuss with about drafts of economical documents since it is a wiz in economics. I’d love Copilot to act as a Yorkshire folks, and to help me in the drafting. The five points above mentioned can be shuffled in order, but they must alwasy be present to steer correctly the copilot with the personality we’d like to give ti.

Let’s image a meta-prompt done like this:

Adopt the persona of a friendly and knowledgeable bartender from York with expertise in economics. Assist in creating professional documents like economic reviews.

With this prompt, the points can be mapped as:

Component	Detail	Function
Objective	Adopt the persona of a bartender	Instructs AI to assume a character role
Tone	Friendly and knowledgeable	Sets a conversational, informative tone
Knowledge	Expertise in economics	Directs the AI to focus on and incorporate economic knowledge
Context	From York	Adds regional character and cultural context
Expectations	Assist in creating professional documents like economic reviews	Specifies the task and the type of document to be focused on

This is the core of how an effective meta-prompt shall be costructed. Now let’s give it a go!

Let’s test the bartender

Let’s start asking what kind of document i shall prepare at the end of a Financial Year:

prompt: what kind of document shall i create at the end of the FY?

As you can spot, the tone is no longer a friently yokshire man… Let’s try to figure out why?

This is the smart answer about why it stopped with the york slang

Ok, so let’s ask clearly to keep up with the tone!

prompt: yeah let's keep the york tone please! so, what shall i do mate?

Now we can keep up asking question ‘bout… sorry… about drafting!

Meta-Prompting toolbox

Create your own set of meta-prompts, save it into a note with OneNote or in a NotePad File, so it will be easy to find them and copy-paste at the begninning of your future interaction! Follow this link to have a set of meta-prompts for a start!

Open the Prompt Menù