Hi, there!
Welcome to the 13th edition of Work in Beta.
In this edition, we talk about building your Style Guide that provides any AI tool context of how you write and how it can follow the same patterns.
Also, if you are looking to build your individual or organisational system with AI, scroll down to the bottom of the newsletter to know more and connect with us.
So, let’s dive in!
IF YOU ONLY HAVE 2 MINUTES
THE ‘HOW TO’ PLAYBOOK
Context Document You Should Build when Working with AI
AI tools are getting better at remembering you. ChatGPT builds memory across conversations. Claude Projects carry context forward. Most tools let you add custom instructions.
But there's one type of context most people never deliberately build: how they write.
Without it, every AI output needs the same corrections. Too formal. Wrong structure. Generic phrasing that sounds nothing like you. The tool isn't failing, it just doesn't have a clear picture of your voice. It's guessing from fragments.
That's the gap a style guide fills. Not a prompt, not a template - a one-page document that gives any AI tool a complete, intentional picture of how you write. Build it once, use it everywhere. Here's how.
What a Style Guide Actually Is
A style guide is not a prompt. It's not a template. It's a one-page document that tells AI how you write specifically enough that it can approximate your voice without you spelling it out every single time.
It captures four things:
Your tone - not vague descriptors like "professional but friendly," but actual examples from your writing that demonstrate what you mean
Your structure patterns - how you open, how you close, how you move from point to point
Your language - words and phrases you use regularly, and words you'd never write
Sample snippets - 2-3 short excerpts from your actual writing that AI can reference as the real benchmark
What it's not: a 3-page brand manual. A list of adjectives. Something you write once and never look at again.
The payoff: whatever AI produces comes out closer to your voice from the first draft. Not perfect but recognisably yours. The corrections you're making today ("too formal," "wrong structure," "not how I'd say this") shrink significantly. That's the value.
Build Your Style Guide in 30 Minutes
Don't invent a voice from scratch. Extract it from writing you've already done.
Step 1: Pull 3-5 pieces of writing you're proud of. Emails, proposals, reports, posts - anything where you felt the output represented you well. These are your source material. The quality of your style guide depends entirely on the quality of what you put in here - pick pieces where you felt the writing was unmistakably you.
Step 2: Let AI do the extraction. This is where most people waste time. Don't try to manually identify your own patterns. It's harder than it sounds, and you'll miss things that are obvious to an outside reader. Instead, paste your writing samples and run this prompt:
I'm building a writing style guide so AI can consistently write in my voice.
Below are [3-5] samples of my writing. Analyze them and identify:
1. Sentence structure - length, rhythm, use of fragments, punctuation patterns
2. Vocabulary — words I use repeatedly, phrases that are distinctly mine
3. Words or phrases I clearly avoid
4. How I typically open a piece or a paragraph
5. How I typically close or land a point
6. Overall tone — backed by specific examples from the text, not adjectives
Then ask me 3-4 targeted questions about anything you couldn't determine from
the samples alone — gaps that would help you build a more accurate style guide.
Here are my writing samples:
[paste/attach your 3-5 pieces here]AI will identify patterns you'd never spot yourself. It will also ask follow-up questions - answer them. That back-and-forth is where the guide gets specific.
Step 3: Review and tighten. AI's output is a draft, not a final document. Read it back and ask: does this actually sound like me? Add anything it missed, cut anything that feels off. The goal is specificity, not adjectives like "direct and conversational," but actual examples from your writing that demonstrate what you mean.
Step 4: Save it as style-guide.md. Save your document as a markdown file style-guide.md. Markdown is the most readable format across AI tools. Every major AI can parse it cleanly, whether you paste it, upload it, or add it to a project. Aim for 400-500 words maximum. AI dilutes its attention across long documents the same way readers do. Tight is better.
Here's what a style guide (template) looks like:
Image Credits: Work in Beta
Fill a style guide once. It becomes your context document.
Use It Everywhere
This is a document. That's the point. It doesn't depend on any specific tool, feature, or setup.
Paste it in a chat. Add a line like: "Here's my writing style guide. Use this as the benchmark for everything you produce for me in this conversation." Takes 10 seconds.
Upload it as a file. In tools that accept file uploads (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, others) attach your
style-guide.mdat the start of a session. Markdown uploads cleanly and AI reads it without any formatting noise. Same result, less friction.Turn it into a Claude Skill. If you use Claude, you can save your style guide as a Skill - it loads automatically in every conversation without you doing anything. No pasting, no uploading. Your writing context is just always there. Learn how to create and use Skills here.
Add it to persistent settings. If you use ChatGPT Custom Instructions, Claude Projects, or any tool with a persistent context feature, paste it there. It loads automatically in every conversation.
The guide works in all four cases. The tool doesn't matter. The document does.
One important note: the guide is alive. When you notice AI still making the same correction consistently, the same structural issue, the same vocabulary miss, that's feedback. Add it to the guide.
The compound effect is real: the more you use it, the less you edit. After a month of consistent use, the first draft is noticeably closer. After three months, you're mostly reviewing, not rewriting.
If you would also want to ground your writing in reality and remove the AI-slop, checkout our De-AI GPT.
The Mistakes We See People Make
Mistake 1: Writing it in adjectives, not examples. "Conversational but professional" tells AI nothing. A sentence from your actual writing tells it everything. Show, don't describe.
Mistake 2: Making it too long. Three pages of guidance gets treated like a terms-and-conditions document, technically read, practically ignored. One page. Four to five sections. That's it.
Mistake 3: Copying someone else's style guide. We've seen people download "writing style templates" online and fill in their name. The result is a guide that sounds like a brand brief, not a person. Your guide must come from your writing, not someone else's framework.
Mistake 4: Building it once and never touching it. Your voice evolves. Your context shifts. A guide from 6 months ago may be describing an older version of how you work. Revisit it every quarter. Update anything that no longer fits.
Mistake 5: Keeping it in one tool. If you built this in ChatGPT's Custom Instructions and never use it in Claude or Gemini, you're leaving most of the value on the table. The guide is yours. It goes everywhere you go.
Do This Week
Tomorrow: Pull 3-5 pieces of writing you're proud of. Read them back. What patterns do you notice? What words keep appearing? How do you tend to open?
This week: Build v1 using the template above. Keep it to one page. Don't overthink it - a rough first version beats a perfect guide you never write.
Next week: Use it in 5 different AI conversations. After each one, note what still needed editing. That list is your v2.
Once you've done this for yourself, you'll notice something: the same principle applies to everything you do with AI. Your style guide is one piece of context. There are others and each one of them matters just as much.
The Full Picture: Style Guide + Voice Profile
A style guide tells AI how you write. It doesn't tell AI who you are - your role, your audience, your work context, your KPIs.
That's what a Voice Profile does.
We covered how to build one in a previous edition. The voice profile captures your work context: what you do, who you do it for, how you think about your work. The style guide captures your writing mechanics: how you structure, what you say, what you'd never write.
Together, they give AI the full picture. It knows who you are and how you write. That combination is what turns AI from a capable but generic tool into something that produces work that actually sounds like you - on the first draft, every time.
Build the style guide first. Then add the voice profile. That's the complete context setup.
Final Thought
AI doesn't know how you write until you tell it. And telling it once, in a document that travels with you, is better than telling it every single time.
The people getting consistent output aren't prompting better. They're building context.
WORK WITH US
The Other 95%
Knowing how to prompt well is roughly 5% of what it means to actually work with AI. The other 95% - context architecture, workflow compression, thinking behaviors, tool orchestration - is where your workday actually changes. Not "I got a better first draft." More like "I built a full client proposal in one sitting that used to take my team three days."
That's what we work on with professionals and teams through Work in Beta.
For individuals, we tear apart your actual workflows and rebuild them around what's possible now.
For organizations - if your AI strategy is "let people figure it out," it's not a strategy. We help teams redesign how they actually work together with AI.
If you're curious what the other 95% looks like, reach out to us here.