Custom Prompts

Giving you an extra level of control over how Byword writes

Custom prompts allow you to insert additional instructions into Byword's writing algorithm.

You can edit custom prompts on your account page. There, you'll be able to add up to 3 prompts of up to 160 characters each.

Points to keep in mind

Some important points to note about custom prompts:

• Custom prompts are not a guarantee Requesting something in a custom prompt doesn't guarantee that the article will adhere to what you've written. Your custom prompts will help steer Byword towards the type of content you're looking to produce, thus cutting down editing time, but a custom prompt isn't a failsafe or guarantee.

• Custom prompts are applied at time of article request That is, when you click Generate on either the single article generator or batch generator, Byword will queue that article using the custom prompts that you have set at that moment in time. Changing your custom prompts after you've clicked Generate won't impact previously requested articles, even if they haven't finished writing.

• More prompts may dilute their effectiveness If there's only one prompt that you really care about, you should generally just insert that prompt. Having that prompt alongside two other less important prompts may reduce the extent to which Byword abides by the first (most important) prompt. If adherence to your prompts is critical, you may also see better results at shorter article lengths.

What makes a good custom prompt?

There are a few things to keep in mind when writing custom prompts:

• Write in an instructional manner This means using custom prompts like use metaphors to explain complex concepts, instead of please can you use metaphors, or this article should have metaphors.

• Avoid negations Language models tend to have difficulties adhering to negations, and you may get better results by rephrasing your custom prompts. For example, instead of writing do not make health claims, you're likely to get better results with avoid making health claims.

• Understand that there are limits to the custom prompts This documentation provides several examples of good custom prompts. Some types of custom prompts which you should avoid are:

  • Write in an engaging tone of voice This can be achieved more naturally with Byword's tone of voice feature.

  • Write in Swedish This can be achieved more naturally with Byword's languages feature.

  • Include a CTA for {my product} Byword is unlikely to know enough about your product to be able to write a high quality CTA.

  • Include 1 H3 for every H2 Custom prompts are injected into Byword's writing process after the article structure is generated, so are unlikely to be able to affect article structure in this sort of manner.

  • Include links to... Byword isn't able to include external links, and requesting this may lead to 404 links being inserted into the article.

  • Insert the keyword in... Byword injects custom prompts later on in the writing process, at which point variables like 'keyword' are no longer present. The above prompt will not influence the article.