Save Your Best Instructions: Projects, GPTs and Skills · Lesson 7 of 7

Capstone: three instructions your team actually uses

20 minutes to finish, plus a week to prove it. Three saved, shared, tested instructions, each with an owner and a review date.

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You've built one saved instruction from start to finish. The capstone is doing it twice more, faster, and then checking that the team really uses all three. The goal isn't three instructions that exist. It's three that get opened every week.

A good set for most businesses, from Lesson 2: one voice, one document format, one recap format. Use what your paste log told you instead if it's different.

Step 1: Build the other two (most of the time)

For each of the two remaining instructions, run the same steps, in order:

  • Master copy. A new copy of the Saved Instruction Master Copy template in your shared drive.
  • Six parts. Role, job, inputs, format, one example, what not to do. (Lesson 3)
  • Reference files. Short, dated, no private details, with a line in the instruction saying what each is for. (Lesson 4)
  • Three tests. Normal, messy, tricky. With and without. Fix the master copy, not the chat. (Lesson 5)
  • Share. Everyone uses, owner edits. (Lesson 6)
  • Register. One line, with owner, backup and review date. (Lesson 6)

The second one goes faster than the first. The third goes faster again.

A shortcut for the voice instruction

If you did the voice kit in the bonus lesson of AI in 60 Minutes, your `voice.md`, `business.md` and `rules.md` files are most of the work. Put them in the shared folder, write a short instruction that says when to use each file, and run the three tests. You can reuse the voice in your other instructions too: add a line like "Write in our voice, using the voice file" to your quote and recap instructions and attach the same file.

A starting point for a meeting recap

Edit the bracketed parts:

> You help [business name] write up internal meetings. I'll paste rough notes or a transcript. Write a recap with: the date and who attended; decisions made (one line each); action items as a table of task, owner, due date; and open questions. If an action item has no owner or due date in the notes, write "Owner: not set" or "Due: not set." Never assign one yourself. Keep it under half a page. Plain words, no filler. Don't include anything said about a customer's personal situation, health or money beyond what's needed for the task.

Then test it on three real sets of notes: a tidy meeting, a rambling one, and one where nobody said who's doing what.

Step 2: Tell the team (5 minutes)

Send one short message to everyone who'll use them. Something like:

> We now have three saved instructions in [tool]: [Quote format], [Customer voice], [Monday recap]. Use them instead of pasting. Here's where to find them: [link or where to click]. If one gets something wrong, tell [owner] rather than fixing it in the chat. Master copies are in [folder] if you're curious.

If you can, show them live in your next team huddle. Two minutes of "here's where it is, here's me using it" does more than the message.

Step 3: Check use after a week (5 minutes)

A week later, ask each person who should be using them three questions:

  • Did you use it this week? If not, why not?
  • Did you still paste anything by hand?
  • Anything it got wrong?

"I forgot it was there" means it needs to be easier to find (pin it, or put the link in your team chat). "It kept getting X wrong" goes to the owner, who fixes the master copy and reruns the tests. "I still paste our warranty paragraph" means there's a fourth instruction waiting, or a reference file missing.

Check it worked

Use the register and tick every box:

  • [ ] Three saved instructions, each with its own master copy in your shared drive
  • [ ] Each one has all six parts and at least one reference file or example
  • [ ] Each one passed the three-request test and has a dated test log line
  • [ ] Each one is shared: the team can use it, only the owner and backup can edit
  • [ ] Each one has an owner, a backup, and a review date 90 days out on someone's calendar
  • [ ] Any Gems or custom GPTs you found have their instructions and files saved in your own documents, with a move date before March 1, 2027 (Gems) or December 11, 2026 (custom GPTs)
  • [ ] At least two people used each instruction in the past week
You're done

You started with good prompts scattered across sticky notes, inboxes and one person's laptop. Now you have three that live in your own documents, work the same way for everyone, have been tested on real work, and have someone looking after them. When the next model or product change lands, you rerun three requests and paste. That's the whole job.

Next steps, when you're ready:

  • Add one instruction a month from your paste log. Same steps.
  • Write Your Team's AI Rules in an Afternoon to put sharing, accounts and what never goes into AI on one page.
  • Connect Your AI to Your Business Tools so a saved instruction can read your calendar or invoices instead of waiting for you to paste them.
  • Design an AI Workflow That Sticks to turn these instructions into workflows the whole team runs every day.

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