The Hidden ‘Behavior Manuals’ of AI Assistants — Collected and Public

Fun fact: every time you open ChatGPT or Claude, they get a hidden ‘behavior manual’ before answering — who they are, how to talk, what not to answer. Normally invisible. Someone dug them all out and published them: the 66k-star system_prompts_leaks.

An Archive of AI’s Hidden Manuals

A system prompt is the AI’s ‘employee handbook’ — companies secretly slip it in to define personality, tone, boundaries. This repo lays them all out verbatim — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Copilot — organized by company and model.

3 Things to Know

The wildest part: these are internal secrets for AI companies — and someone systematized and published them. For AI researchers, this is an unprecedented ‘AI behavior spec archive.‘

The Author’s Story

Ásgeir Thor Johnson, an Icelandic developer, maintains it solo — long-term tracking of AI updates, extracting prompts one by one. CC0 public domain: anyone can use, remix, even sell. A Discord community names which new models to collect next — collection as a shared public project.

Three Ways to Use It

Ask what you want first: research → read like papers; understand → check your favorite AI; curious → it’s free. Zero install — open the page and start.

Trust Check

Honest note: solo-maintained 66k stars made me skeptical — then I saw the activity: constant updates, growing catalog. CC0 is the most permissive license in law. One caveat: prompts go stale (vendors revise), and there’s no third-party verification — treat as reference, not official documents.

Where It’s Headed

Toward becoming the public archive of system prompts — growing with new models, completed by community PRs. For you: the more diverse AI gets, the more valuable this archive becomes.

Try It: No Install

git clone https://github.com/asgeirtj/system_prompts_leaks.git
cd system_prompts_leaks
ls          # companies' folders
cat openai/chatgpt.md

Reading one manual, you’ll go “ah, so that’s why it talks like that.”

Installation: Zero Install

Clean structure, one folder per company. Note: files update often — git pull regularly.

FAQ & Friendly Reminders

• Q: Legal? A: CC0 public domain — though vendor NDAs may apply; assess before commercial redistribution.
• Q: Accurate? A: Broadly; details can be stale.
• Q: Official? A: No — a community archive, not any AI company’s document.

Researcher type or curious type? Comment which — and tell me which AI’s manual you want to see next.