Nearly every guide to writing a personal constitution ends in the same place. Name your values. Define your non-negotiables. Know who you're becoming. Then it hands you a blank page and wishes you luck.
The blank page is the entire problem. Not because the questions are hard to understand, but because they're too big to answer cold, and because there's no obvious shape for the answer once you have one. So here's the shape. Copy it, fill it in, and skip the staring.
The personal constitution template
A personal constitution is a one- or two-page document that tells an AI what you value, what you believe, where your lines are, who you're trying to become, and how you want to be treated. Six sections, plain markdown, no app required. Here's the whole thing:
# Personal Constitution — [Your Name]
_Last updated: [date]_
## What I value
[Five or six words you actually live by. One sentence each on
what that value has cost you.]
## What I believe
[Three to five plain statements about how work, people, and good
decisions actually function.]
## My non-negotiables
[The lines you won't cross. Write "I don't ___," never "I try
not to ___."]
## Who I'm becoming
[Two or three sentences about the person, not the outcome.]
## How to treat me
[Push or reassure? Challenge the premise or answer the question?
Say it plainly.]
## How to use this
[One line telling the model what to do with everything above.]
That's it. Twenty minutes if you're honest, an hour if you keep rewriting the first section. If you want the fuller argument for why this document exists at all, start here. Everything below is about filling it in.
How to fill in each section
What I value. The trick is the cost. Anyone can write honesty and craft. Writing "craft, which has cost me two projects I wanted because I wouldn't ship them half-finished" gives a model something to reason with. A value with no trade-off attached is decoration, and a model reads decoration as noise.
What I believe. Operating assumptions, not aspirations. "Most problems people bring me are staffing problems wearing a strategy costume." "Deadlines set by someone who won't do the work are suggestions." These are the sentences you'd defend in an argument, and they're what tell a model which of two reasonable answers you'd actually pick.
My non-negotiables. Flat declaratives only. I don't, not I try not to. A hedge tells the model the rule is optional, and it will helpfully treat it as optional at the exact moment it matters. Three or four is plenty. If you have fifteen, most of them are preferences.
Who I'm becoming. Not a revenue number and not a job title. Those are outcomes, and outcomes belong in a different document. This is about character: the person you're trying to be in a year, which is what should be shaping the advice you get today.
How to treat me. The most-skipped section, and the one that changes the most. Do you want to be challenged or supported? Should it push back on your premise or answer the question you actually asked? Write one or two sentences here and the tone of every answer you get shifts.
How to use this. Most templates stop at describing you. Add a line that turns the description into an instruction: Read this before answering anything that involves a trade-off. When the smart move and my move differ, say so and tell me both. You'd be surprised how much work one sentence does.
What doesn't belong in it
The fastest way to ruin a constitution is to put everything in it. It becomes a file you're constantly editing and never trusting, and a model reading a stale document will state last quarter's situation as current fact without hesitating.
Values move slowly. Most of what you want your AI to know does not. So:
| What you're tempted to write | Belongs here? | Where it actually goes |
|---|---|---|
| "I won't take work from clients who lie to their customers" | Yes | Stays — it's a line, not a circumstance |
| "I'd rather hear I'm wrong early than stay comfortable" | Yes | Stays — this is the "how to treat me" section |
| "I'm hiring two people before the end of the year" | No | State of the Union |
| "Short sentences. No semicolons. Oxford comma, always" | No | Writing Codex — see how to give AI your writing style |
| "The time I walked away from the biggest contract we'd been offered" | No | Story Bank — it's evidence for a value, not the value |
| "My business partner is the one who pressure-tests the numbers" | No | Influence Roster |
That split is the whole design of the six anchors: one durable question each, so no single file has to carry everything and go out of date all at once.
A worked example
Here's a filled-in fragment. The person is invented — a freelance operations consultant, twelve years in logistics, two kids, no interest in scaling into an agency. Not a model to copy, just a shape to react against.
What I value Directness. It has cost me two client relationships that were pleasant and going nowhere. Unhurried work. I turn down anything that requires me to be excellent by Friday.
My non-negotiables I don't take retainers I can't fulfill in twenty hours a week. I don't recommend software I haven't personally run for a quarter.
How to treat me Argue with me before you agree with me. If I'm asking how to do something I shouldn't be doing at all, say that first, then answer the question anyway.
Notice how little of it is flattering. That's the tell of a real one. If your draft reads like something you'd put on a website, you've written a mission statement, and a mission statement is a banner rather than a tool.
If you get three sentences in and stall, that's normal, and it isn't a discipline problem. The patterns that make you legible are mostly invisible from the inside, which is why being asked pointed questions works so much better than freewriting. That guided excavation has a name, context mining, and it's the difference between a template and a filled-in file.
How to hand it to your AI
The document is the work. Delivery is a paste.
In ChatGPT, put it in Custom Instructions if it fits, or attach the file to a Project so every chat inside it starts briefed. In Claude, it goes in Project knowledge. In Gemini, it's a knowledge file on a Gem. And in anything else, including whatever ships next year, it's a paste at the top of the conversation. The mechanics differ slightly by tool, the file doesn't.
Keep the original somewhere that isn't a product. That's the part people skip, and it's the part that decides whether switching tools costs you twenty minutes or a lost afternoon.
Then keep it true
Twice a year is a reasonable cadence, plus any time something real shifts. A move. A role change. A hard call that revealed a line you didn't know you had until you refused to cross it.
If you find yourself editing it monthly, you've put circumstances in it, and circumstances belong in the fast-moving document instead. Values are supposed to feel boring to revisit. That's what makes them foundation.
So open a blank file, paste the six headings, and answer them badly on the first pass. A rough constitution in your AI's hands beats a perfect one you never wrote, and the next hard question you bring it gets answered by something that knows what you'd actually do.
Start with the free Personal Constitution anchor if you'd rather be asked the questions than face the blank page.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a personal constitution template?
- It's a fill-in-the-blanks structure for the document that holds your values, beliefs, non-negotiables, and how you want to be treated. Instead of staring at a blank page, you answer six short prompts. The output is a page or two you own, in plain markdown, that any AI tool can read.
- What sections should a personal constitution include?
- Six: what you value, what you believe, your non-negotiables, who you're becoming, how you want to be treated, and a short line telling the model what to do with all of it. The first five describe you. The sixth turns the description into instructions, which is the part most templates leave out.
- How do I give my personal constitution to ChatGPT?
- Three options. Paste it into Custom Instructions if it fits the character limit, attach the markdown file to a Project so every chat in that Project reads it, or paste it at the top of a conversation when you need it once. The file stays yours in all three cases, which is the point.
- What's the difference between a personal constitution and a mission statement?
- A mission statement is one polished sentence aimed outward, usually at other people. A personal constitution is a page or two aimed inward, and it includes the unflattering parts: the lines you won't cross, how you want to be pushed, what you'll trade and what you won't. One is a banner. The other is usable.
- How often should you update a personal constitution?
- Twice a year is plenty, plus any time something genuinely shifts — a move, a role change, a hard call that revealed a line you didn't know you had. Values move slowly. If you're editing it monthly, you're probably putting current circumstances in it, and those belong in a State of the Union instead.
