Removing filler text

How can I get ChatGPT to stop inserting explanatory filler at the beginning and end of posts? Quick Question I'm a longtime subscriber of ChatGPT+ and a more recent premium subscriber to Claude. No matter what custom instructions I give, ChatGPT (and seemingly Claude as well) inserts contentless explanatory filler text at the beginning and end of its responses that I then have to remove from any usable text in the rest of each response. This is especially annoying when, as often happens, the system ignores my specific instructions because it's trying to keep the number of tokens of its response down. Any tips for fixing this, if it can be fixed? Example prompt to ChatGPT+ (4o): "I am going to give you a block of text that I've dictated for an attorney notes case analysis document. Please clean it up and correct any errors: 'Related cases case title and number, forum, parties, allegations, and status ) return relevant people new line claims new line key fact chronology new line questions to investigate new line client contacts new line'" The response began and ended with the filler text I am talking about: Beginning: "Here’s a cleaned-up and corrected version of your dictated text for the case analysis document:" Ending: "This structure ensures clarity, readability, and logical organization for an attorney's case analysis. Let me know if you'd like to add or adjust any sections." Upvote 4 Downvote 3 Go to comments Share Share u/hellobonsai-app avatar hellobonsai-app • Promoted Agencies choose Hellobonsai to manage projects & clients. You should try it. Learn More hellobonsai.com Thumbnail image: Agencies choose Hellobonsai to manage projects & clients. You should try it. Tell it in the instructions to wrap the beginning and end of any preceding explanatory content before the real content in a </> tag and then use RE to remove the tags and what is between them from the beginning and then instruct it to do the same with the end. Basically think of it this way. You use regular expressions to edit the text by cutting the content that is wrapped in whatever tag you want to use. Except you can ask the LLM to run any type of computer logic you can think of. Comment

To minimize or remove filler content from ChatGPT's responses, you can try the following: ### 1. **Custom Instructions** You can use the *custom instructions* feature (available in ChatGPT+) to specifically instruct it not to include introductory or concluding statements. Example custom instruction for the **What would you like ChatGPT to know about how you'd like it to respond?** field: - "Do not include any prefatory or explanatory statements at the beginning of responses. Provide only the requested content without introductions or summaries at the end." ### 2. **Explicit Prompts** You can write your prompt to make it clear that no filler text is needed. For example: - "Clean up and correct the errors in this text. **Do not include any prefatory or concluding statements—just the corrected text itself:**" This explicit phrasing often reduces filler. ### 3. **Use a Wrapper Mechanism** Ask the AI to wrap the actual response content in special tags so you can programmatically extract the relevant part: - **Prompt**: "Clean up and correct the following text. Wrap the response in `<start>` and `<end>` tags, and include no other text before or after these tags." - **Expected Response**: ``` <start> Cleaned and corrected text goes here. <end> ``` You can then use a script or regex to extract everything between `<start>` and `<end>`. ### 4. **Fine-Tune with a Post-Processing Script** If filler persists, you can automate its removal: - Use regular expressions or a text processing script to identify and remove common patterns like: - "Here’s a cleaned-up and corrected version..." - "This structure ensures clarity..." For instance, a Python regex script could be: ```python import re response = """ Here’s a cleaned-up and corrected version of your dictated text for the case analysis document: <actual content> This structure ensures clarity, readability, and logical organization for an attorney's case analysis. Let me know if you'd like to add or adjust any sections. """ # Remove filler text at the beginning and end cleaned_response = re.sub(r"^.*?\n", "", response) # Remove everything up to the first newline cleaned_response = re.sub(r"This structure ensures.*$", "", cleaned_response) # Remove the ending filler print(cleaned_response.strip()) ``` ### 5. **Use an Open-Source LLM** If Claude and ChatGPT still include filler, consider exploring fine-tuning or instruct-tuning an open-source LLM like Qwen2.5-Coder or LLaMA for your specific needs. You can adjust its responses to remove unnecessary prefaces or conclusions. Let me know if you'd like a detailed example for one of these steps!