Preface

I still remember the night everything changed.

It was November 30, 2022. I was sitting at my desk, scrolling through Twitter, when I saw people talking about something called "ChatGPT." I clicked the link, but honestly? I didn't expect much. I had tried those old "word completion" AI tools before, the ones that generated nonsense after a few sentences. I thought this would be more of the same.

I typed a simple question and hit enter.

Then I froze.

The response wasn't just coherent. It was good. It understood what I meant. It could reason. It felt completely different from anything I had seen before. I tried another prompt. And another. Each response amazed me more than the last.

I couldn't sleep that night. For the first time, I felt like I was truly talking to a machine, and it was talking back in a way that actually made sense.

A Repository Born from Wonder

In those early days, I wasn't alone in my excitement. Everywhere I looked, people were discovering creative ways to use ChatGPT. Teachers were using it to explain complex concepts. Writers were collaborating with it on stories. Developers were debugging code with its help.

I started collecting the best prompts I found. The ones that worked like magic. The ones that turned simple questions into brilliant answers. And I thought: Why keep this to myself?

So I created a simple GitHub repository called Awesome ChatGPT Prompts. I expected maybe a few hundred people would find it useful.

I was wrong.

Within weeks, the repository took off. Thousands of stars. Then tens of thousands. People from all over the world started adding their own prompts, sharing what they learned, and helping each other. What started as my personal collection became something much bigger: a worldwide community of curious people helping each other.

Today, that repository has over 140,000 GitHub stars and contributions from hundreds of people I've never met but feel deeply grateful for.

Why I Wrote This Book

The original version of this book was published on Gumroad in early 2023, just months after ChatGPT launched. It was one of the first books ever written about prompt engineering, an attempt to capture everything I had learned about crafting effective prompts when the field was still brand new. To my amazement, over 100,000 people downloaded it.

But three years have passed since then. AI has changed a lot. New models have appeared. And we've all learned so much more about how to talk to AI.

This new edition is my gift to the community that gave me so much. It contains everything I wish I had known when I started: what works, what to avoid, and ideas that stay true no matter which AI you use.

What This Book Means to Me

I won't pretend this is just an instruction manual. It means more than that to me.

This book captures a moment when the world changed, and people came together to figure it out. It represents late nights of trying things, the joy of discovery, and the kindness of strangers who shared what they learned.

Most of all, it represents my belief that the best way to learn something is to share it with others.

For You

Whether you're just getting started with AI or you've been using it for years, I wrote this book for you.

I hope it saves you time. I hope it sparks ideas. I hope it helps you accomplish things you never thought possible.

And when you discover something amazing, I hope you'll share it with others, just as so many people shared with me.

That's how we all get better together.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of this community.

Now, let's begin.

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With gratitude,

Fatih Kadir Akın
Istanbul, January 2025