How to Set Up Custom AI Prompts (with Examples)

The built-in actions — fix grammar, summarize, change tone — cover the common tasks. But the real power comes when you build your own: the prompts you run twenty times a day, tuned to your work, bound to a key so you never type them again. Here’s how to design good custom prompts, a set of copy-paste examples to start from, and how to wire them to a hotkey so they fire anywhere.

What makes a reusable prompt good

A one-off chat message and a reusable prompt are different animals. A good saved prompt is:

• Self-contained — it works on whatever text you select, with no extra context typed each time. It refers to “the following text” or “the selected text,” not to something you’d paste separately.
• Output-clean — it ends with “Return only the [result], with no preamble or explanation,” so you don’t get “Sure, here’s…” mixed into the result.
• Constrained — it states what to keep (meaning, facts, formatting) and what not to do (don’t invent, don’t change code, don’t pad).
• Single-purpose — one prompt, one job. “Fix grammar AND make it formal AND shorten it” produces mush; make three prompts.
• Format-explicit — if you want bullets, a table, or a docstring, say so.

Copy-paste prompt examples

Steal these as starting points. Each is written to run on a selection and return clean output.

Polished but plain English:

“Rewrite the following text in clear, plain English. Cut jargon and filler, keep my meaning and facts exactly. Return only the rewritten text, no preamble.”

Reply suggestion (for chat/email):

“Write a brief, friendly reply to the following message. Match its tone, keep it under three sentences. Return only the reply.”

Bullet-point TL;DR:

“Summarize the following text as 3–5 bullet points capturing only the key facts. Don’t add anything not in the text. Return only the bullets.”

Make it confident (kill the hedging):

“Rewrite the following to sound confident and direct. Remove hedges like ‘I think,’ ‘just,’ ‘maybe,’ and ‘kind of,’ without changing the meaning. Return only the rewritten text.”

Commit message from a diff/notes:

“Write a concise, conventional-commit-style message summarizing the following changes. One subject line under 60 chars, then bullet details if needed. Return only the message.”

Explain like I’m five:

“Explain the following in simple terms anyone could understand, no jargon. Return only the explanation.”

The generic method (any AI tool)

Without dedicated software, “custom prompts” means a saved snippet you reuse:

1. Write and refine your prompt in a chat tool until the output is reliably clean.
2. Save it somewhere fast to reach — a text-expander snippet, a notes file, your browser’s saved prompts.
3. Each use: copy your text, open the AI tool, paste your saved prompt, paste your text after it, run, read, copy the result back, replace, re-format.

It works, and a text-expander helps — but you’re still doing the full copy-paste round-trip every time, and there’s no hotkey that runs the prompt on your selection in place.

The one-hotkey way with EditSnappy

EditSnappy is built for exactly this — custom prompts bound to hotkeys, run on whatever you’ve selected:

1. Create an action — paste your prompt (use the examples above) into a new EditSnappy action and give it a name.
2. Bind it to a hotkey — or leave it in the quick menu you pop up over any selection.
3. Use it anywhere: select text in any app, press the key, and your custom prompt runs on the selection and streams the result in to replace it — with a live diff, Tab to accept, Esc to keep your original.

Your saved actions are yours and never paywalled — your custom-prompt hotkeys are part of the deal, not a locked upgrade. EditSnappy strips the model’s preamble automatically (so your prompts don’t even need the “no preamble” line, though it doesn’t hurt), preserves your formatting, and reads surrounding context so each action fits the document.

Why this is where inline editing pays off most

Custom prompts are the difference between a generic tool and your tool — and their value compounds with use, which means it’s bound entirely to how frictionless each run is. A custom prompt you have to copy-paste into a browser tab is one you’ll use twice. A custom prompt on a hotkey, firing on your selection in place, is one you’ll use all day.

And they fire everywhere — including Slack, VS Code, Notion, and the other Electron and Java apps where most inline AI tools silently fail because the OS accessibility API misfires. EditSnappy is built around that: native write first, then a clean inject or one-click “Insert” fallback, so your custom action actually lands. Every result is shown before it commits, with your original one keypress away in local history. One hotkey, Mac and Windows.

Turn your most-repeated edits into hotkeys. Start a free trial — no credit card and build your own actions. See the full task index for the built-in actions to model yours on.