Personalising Percy Chat
Written By Paolo Rufrano
Last updated 1 day ago
Percy Chat can learn a little about you once, and apply it to every conversation, instead of you re-explaining your role and preferences at the start of each chat.
Customize
Open your account menu at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Customize. Three fields:
What should we call you? (50 characters) Your name or a nickname. The AI uses it, and it appears in the greeting when you start a new chat.
What do you do? (50 characters) Your role or field, such as Product designer, GP, Year 10 maths teacher or Rails developer. This is the highest-value field of the three. Knowing your job lets the model pitch explanations at the right level and use the right vocabulary without being told.
How should the AI respond? (300 characters) Standing instructions about style. Some that work well:
Be concise. Skip preamble and get to the answer. Use British English. When you're unsure, say so rather than guessing.
I'm learning to code. Explain the reasoning behind suggestions, don't just give me code to paste.
Click Save preferences. It applies to every chat from then on, including ones already open.
Writing instructions that work
Be specific about behaviour, not personality. "Answer in three bullets or fewer" beats "be helpful".
Say what you don't want. "Don't apologise" and "don't restate my question back to me" are effective.
Keep it general. These apply to every chat, so anything task-specific belongs in a project.
You have 300 characters, so pick the two or three habits that matter most.
When project instructions take over
Inside a project, that project's Instructions replace your global response instructions. A project usually needs a different voice from your default, so the more specific setting wins.
Your name and occupation still apply. See Projects: instructions, files and memory.
Theme
The same account menu has a Theme toggle with three options:
System follows your device's light/dark setting
Light
Dark
The choice saves to your account and follows you across devices.
What isn't configurable
There's no font, text size or accent colour setting. Percy Chat picks a reading-optimised font for message text and leaves it there.