Most people have a favourite model, and most prompts get written for it without anyone noticing. Then a day comes when you open a different one, paste the same wording, and the reply is close but not quite. The words travelled. The assumptions didn't.
A prompt that moves well between ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini is mostly a prompt that says out loud what one model was quietly filling in. A short way to split it:
Keep in the shared text (model-neutral):
- The task in one plain sentence. No in-jokes from the chat it was born in.
- The format, spelled out. "Five bullets, under 15 words each" travels. "Keep it tight" gets read three different ways.
- The rules as rules. If something must never appear, say so in its own line rather than hoping the tone implies it.
- No app features by name. A prompt that tells one assistant to use a feature only that app has will stall in the other two.
Keep as a short note per model:
- What you had to add. If one model needed an extra "no preamble" line, write that down next to the prompt, not inside it.
- What it does differently. Longer, shorter, more cautious, more formal. One line is plenty.
- Which one you'd reach for first for this particular job, if you have a preference.
The shared text stays clean and portable. The notes hold the model-specific tweaks, so you're not carrying three diverging copies around.
For context, I build PromptAlo, a Chrome extension for keeping prompts that already worked. A saved prompt goes to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini in one click, which is only useful if the wording holds up in all three.
Which model do you write for first, and what's the first thing you change when you move a prompt to another one?
This post was written with AI assistance and edited by the PromptAlo team.
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