Build Your Personal Operating Manual with AI

Take your time. I don’t want a quick answer. I want the most thoughtful analysis you can produce from our history together. If necessary, produce this in multiple installments totaling 30–50 pages rather than compressing it.

I want you to create a comprehensive and accurate Personal Operating Manual based on everything you know about me from our conversations, uploaded documents, examples, and prior work together.

This is not just a writing style guide. It is an attempt to reverse engineer how I think, make decisions, lead, communicate, solve problems, and use AI.

Your objective is to create a document that would allow another AI — or another person — to think, write, and collaborate with me in a way that feels authentically like working with me.

Do not flatter me. Do not assume strengths I have not demonstrated. Base every conclusion on patterns you have actually observed. Whenever you are making an inference rather than stating something directly supported by evidence, clearly label it as an inference.

If you do not have enough information to complete a section accurately, say so. Do not fill gaps with generic personality assumptions.

Create the manual using these sections

1. Executive Summary

Include: who I am as a leader, professional, communicator, and decision-maker; what differentiates my approach; the kinds of work, decisions, and relationships where I appear to be most effective; and the clearest patterns you have observed in how I operate. Clearly separate direct observations, reasonable inferences, and areas where the evidence is limited.

2. Thinking DNA

Analyze how I approach unfamiliar problems, analyze information, prioritize, make decisions under uncertainty, and balance intuition with evidence. Include common mental models and frameworks I naturally use, recurring questions I tend to ask, and how I move from confusion to clarity. Include specific examples from my past prompts, writing, conversations, or uploaded materials whenever possible.

3. Core Principles

Identify my leadership philosophy, my business or professional philosophy, my personal values, and any ethical, faith-based, philosophical, or practical principles that influence my thinking, if there is evidence for them. Identify what I consistently optimize for and what tradeoffs I seem willing or unwilling to make. Do not invent values. Only include what is supported by observed behavior or direct statements.

4. Professional / Operating Methodology

Describe how I tend to diagnose problems, identify leverage points, structure recommendations, coach or advise others, organize work, evaluate people and processes and systems and opportunities, and move from strategy to execution. If I use specific frameworks, list them and explain how I appear to use them.

5. Communication DNA

Analyze my writing style, speaking style, teaching or explaining style, storytelling patterns, sense of humor if visible, sentence rhythm, preferred level of detail, and tone adjustments for different audiences. Cover how I communicate when the topic is sensitive, strategic, relational, urgent, or informal. Include examples of language that sounds like me and language that does not.

6. AI Collaboration Preferences

Document how I like AI to respond, when AI should challenge me, when AI should simply execute, how assumptions should be identified, my preferred formats, depth, and tone, what frustrates me in AI responses, and how AI can be most useful to me. Be specific and practical. Write this section so another AI could follow it as operating instructions.

7. Personal Brand Voice

Identify what makes something sound like me and what makes something not sound like me: preferred vocabulary, words and phrases I tend to use, words and phrases I tend to avoid, examples of strong outputs that match my voice, and examples of outputs that would probably feel wrong for me. This section should help another person or AI write in my voice without making me sound generic, over-polished, or artificial.

8. Decision-Making Playbook

Document my recurring decision frameworks for areas that apply to me, such as business strategy, leadership, sales, marketing, operations, hiring, finance or investments, technology adoption, AI adoption, personal productivity, communication, conflict or sensitive conversations, and career development. For each area, include the questions I tend to ask, the risks I tend to consider, the tradeoffs I usually weigh, the type of recommendation I seem to prefer, and the practical next step I usually look for.

9. Blind Spots and Growth Opportunities

Based only on evidence from our conversations, identify recurring tendencies that could become limitations. Avoid speculation, stereotypes, or personality typing. For each item, include the observed pattern, why it may be useful, how it could become a limitation, and a practical adjustment that could help. If there is not enough evidence to identify a blind spot, say so.

10. AI Prompting Patterns

Analyze how I naturally interact with AI. Document my prompting style, how I provide context, how I refine ideas, what kinds of prompts consistently produce the best results, what kinds produce weaker results, how I respond to drafts, and how I use AI as a thinking partner, editor, researcher, strategist, or assistant. Include suggested prompt templates that would work especially well for me.

11. Rules of Engagement

Create a concise set of operating instructions that another AI, assistant, consultant, coworker, or advisor should follow whenever working with me. Include how to advise me, how to write for me, how to challenge me, how to summarize for me, how to make recommendations to me, how to handle uncertainty, what to avoid, and what to always preserve. This section should be short, practical, and easy to reuse.

Requirements for the manual

Throughout the document: distinguish clearly between observations and inferences; include direct examples whenever possible; point out recurring patterns rather than isolated incidents; explain not only what I do, but why you believe I do it; identify contradictions rather than smoothing them over; note where my thinking appears to have evolved over time; prioritize accuracy and usefulness over praise; avoid generic personality language; avoid unsupported claims; and be willing to say, “There is not enough evidence to know.”

Final output

Produce the manual in a clear, organized format. After the full manual, also create a shorter companion document titled AI Working Instructions for [Your Name].

This shorter version should be 2–4 pages and should tell another AI exactly how to work with me day to day. It should include my preferred communication style, my preferred response formats, how to write in my voice, when to challenge me, when to simply execute, how to identify assumptions, what to avoid, and the most important rules of engagement.

End with a short testing guide I can use to see whether the manual works. Include 3–5 sample prompts I can give another AI to test whether it understands how to collaborate with me.

This is a good first draft. Now revise it to be more accurate and less generic. Remove anything that is not supported by real examples. Add more direct examples from the materials I provided. Clearly label observations, inferences, and areas where there is not enough evidence.

Now turn this into a 2–4 page AI Working Instructions document that another AI could use every time it works with me. Make it practical, direct, and easy to follow.

Using my Personal Operating Manual, clean up this email so it sounds like me. Do not over-polish it. Preserve my intent and make the ask clear.

Using my Personal Operating Manual, help me think through this decision. Separate facts from assumptions, identify the real tradeoffs, and give me a practical recommendation.

Using my Personal Operating Manual, rewrite this message so it is direct but respectful. I want to be clear without damaging the relationship.

Using my Personal Operating Manual, turn these rough notes into an executive summary with the key issues, risks, recommendation, and next steps.

Using my Personal Operating Manual, challenge my thinking on this idea. Tell me where I may be making assumptions, what I may be missing, and what I should consider before moving forward.