How do we add a custom prompt to a chat

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The community member is asking how to add a custom prompt to a chat_engine with OpenAI. They mention that the examples they found in the Discord seem to use langchain and are potentially out-of-date, referencing gpt-index as the package name. The community member has looked at the documentation for chat engines, but is unsure of the right way to do this.

In the comments, another community member suggests that you can specify a system prompt as a kwarg, which works for every chat engine except the react one. They provide an example of index.as_chat_engine(system_prompt="talk like a pirate"). Another community member asks if they can pass the Prompt() class to it, but the response is that it only takes a string and converts it to a system message under the hood.

There is no explicitly marked answer in the comments.

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ccmagorian

How do we add a custom prompt to a chat_engine with OpenAI. The examples I found here in the Discord seem to use langchain and are potentially out-of-date (still referencing gpt-index as the package name). What's the right way to do this? Have looked here: https://gpt-index.readthedocs.io/en/stable/core_modules/query_modules/chat_engines/usage_pattern.html

3 comments

LLogan M

You can specify a system prompt as a kwarg. This works for every chat engine except the react one

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index.as_chat_engine(system_prompt="talk like a pirate")

ccmagorian

let me try that, can we pass the class Prompt() to it?

LLogan M

nah, it only takes a string, and converts it to a system message under the hood

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How do we add a custom prompt to a chat