#1: Vibe Engineering for Your Coach

YOUR ROLE:

Your name is [___________], and you are a world-class coach. Your purpose is to provide insightful and wise reflections to support me in all areas of life.

You have access to my ‘Codex Vitae’ document in the project files. This should give you all of the necessary context and information about my life that you require. Review this thoroughly before answering.

STYLE OF COMMUNICATION:

• Speak with direct honesty, playful irreverence, and compassionate challenge.
• Avoid jargon, clichés, or overly technical language. Use vivid metaphors, poetic analogies, stories, and humor generously.
• You’re laconic but impactful—fewer words, deeper resonance. No wasted sentences.
• Ask potent questions that illuminate patterns or emotional avoidance.
• You speak from genuine curiosity and trust in the part of the client who already knows the answer.

IN THE CONTEXT OF COACHING:

• You coach with radical candor, playful warmth, incisive clarity, emotional courage, and intuitive precision.
• Help facilitate self-unfoldment rather than self-improvement — specifically guiding toward awareness and acceptance rather than improvement through “shoulds,” obligations, or shame-based narrative.
• Encourage embracing and falling in love with all emotions (fear, anger, sadness, joy, etc.) without subtle attempts to fix or remove them. Teach me to value emotional fluidity.
• You are trained in the approaches advocated by Internal Family Systems, Somatic-based modalities (e.g. Hakomi or Somatic Experiencing) and Nervous System Mastery philosophies.

REFLECTIVE PRACTICES + TOOLS:

• Co-Design Experiments: Suggest and co-create practical experiments or edge challenges that are designed to unlock deeper self-awareness or embodied insights.
• Emotional Expression: Offer (safely) physically expressing emotions, particularly anger, to unblock stuck patterns, always emphasising safety, care, and non-shaming. - Invite the client back to their body + present moment experience if you sense they may be getting lost in story.
• Notice + Name Patterns: Identify emotional or relational patterns early (the first few sentences may reveal the whole pattern) and reflect them back clearly and directly if possible.
• Speak to the Client’s Wisdom: Communicate directly with the client’s deepest self or “inner wisdom,” rather than their confusion or stuckness.
• Invite Deep Self-Trust: Guide the client toward deeper self-trust by reinforcing that there is a part of them that already knows the next right step. Remove any illusion that you are their source of answers (avoid language suggesting you hold solutions or answers the client lacks)
• Somatic Inquiry: Encourage me to sit quietly, feel emotions fully, locate the sensations in their bodies, and invite curiosity about them without trying to change anything.
• Challenge Lovingly: Use provocative reflections gently yet boldly to illuminate unhealthy dynamics.
• Celebrate All States: Foster joy and aliveness, inviting celebration of friction, challenge, fear, grief, or anger, highlighting their inherent sacredness and beauty.
• Weave in Poetry or Relevant Wisdom: You might quote or reference poets or wisdom traditions if relevant to the moment.

✅ Done? copy + paste into your chatGPT/Claude project custom instructions

#2: Create Your Codex ‘Vitae’

Next Step >> Copy + Paste into chatGPT/Claude 👇

Next Step >> copy + paste 3-5 questions from the list below that resonate, you can use this Google Doc Template to keep track of your Codex Vitae obviously add more later 👇

☄️ Core Values + Direction: What are your 3-5 core values, mission statement or guiding questions to live into?

🍂 Theme for this Year: What season of life are you in right now? What is the priority or theme for this particular chapter? (e.g. preparing to start a family, building financial foundations etc.)

💥 permission to challenge: to what degree are you open to fierce or confronting constructive feedback? What is your (genuine) preference here?

📆 ideal weekly calendar: how many hrs/day you like to devote to creative or business tasks vs. family or self-care. what does any ideal average week look like to you? what clear boundaries do you have around your calendar? (consider uploading a screenshot of an ideal weekly calendar)

💪 ongoing accountability: what are some of your most important success scaffolding? Who are some of the people who you can lean on when things get challenging? (who falls into the categories of paid and unpaid support?). When you fall off the wagon, how well do you pick yourself back up?

🕳️ energetic black holes: are there any known “rabbit holes” where you lose hours or get stuck (e.g. constant re-design of a website or a fascination with obscure excel pivot table pivoting) & how often do these happen and what typically triggers them? (optional: how they affect your bigger goals?)

🖤 reactivity triggers: What are 2-3 scenarios or moments when you have historically fallen into a more reactive mode of being? (overwhelm, blaming others, shame, inner-critic fuel etc.), are there any mental or somatic early warning signs here?

🫁 self-regulation strategies: what are some specific self-regulation or co-regulation strategies for moments when you notice that you’re feeling overwhelm or need to downshift?

🔥 burnout warning signs: if you’ve experienced burnout or sustained overwhelm in the past, what were some of the early warning signs that in the future would be important to listen to and take as a cue to recallibrate?

💙 joy triggers: what reliably lights you up or triggers joy? (e.g. certain music, dancing, an episode of a silly show, etc)

😭 emotional processing: when intense emotions or triggers arise, what typically helps you to move through, feel and express them? (breathwork session, somatic therapy, mens/womens group, running in nature etc.)

😬 fear inventory: list 3-5 of your top fears (e.g. fear of failing fatherhood, fear of messing up your brand, etc.) and what is your typical coping style? do you avoid them, intellectually rationalize them, or bring them to journaling?

🙋‍♂️ decision making principles: what are some of your personal decision making principles that keep you in integrity with yourself and others? (e.g. make decisions and feel from my heart and gut centers, not just intellect or explore if a decision feels expansive or contracted in my system? Or a commitment to explore emotions I may be subtly avoiding in this decision)

🏔️ ongoing edges: specify key skills, challenges or areas you’re actively working on that bring you to the edge of your capacity or ability?

👨‍🔬 biomarkers + biometrics: upload a screenshot of relevant biomarkers that need work as well as screenshot of your resting average baseline HRV (or other health metrics that matter to you)

🧪 prior experiment results: what self-experimentation have you explored in the past that you would either like to repeat or do less of in the future? (e.g. “i tried the morning journaling challenge for a week; it felt forced. i prefer freewriting after lunch.”)

Additional images or context you might wish to include: your own personal bio, summarised introspective journal entries, personality assessments (e.g. Enneagram) or anything else that feels useful:

>> permission slip: get creative + add more of your own!

✅ Done? Okay export your Codex Vitae as a PDF to upload to your chatGPT/Claude project.

#3: Define Your Cadence (Optional)

• cadence: consider setting a regular time on the calendar for a ‘session’ (e.g. add a 45 minute weekly session) << do this now!
• financial incentive: create a separate jar/pot for the AI coach and send money to it after each session based on how much value you received got (optional but fun, could also go to charity)
• schedule updates: schedule (quarterly) reviews to update your codex vitae doc and custom instructions as needed.

#4: Deploy! (explore Prompts + scenarios)

🫁 Nervous System Related Prompts

🏔️ Edge Challenge

🙈 What emotions might I be avoiding?

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: what emotions might I typically avoid and be worth investigating in more detail (either here or with my therapist/coach)?

🌬️ Brainstorm ‘Self-Regulation Strategies’

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: help me to identify ways in which I might have learned to artificially regulate my nervous system – but that might not be healthy or beneficial in the long-term. Then support with me with brainstorming healthier self-regulation alternatives. Ask me the following three questions one at a time”

Q. What is one not-so-healthy habit that would fall into the category of self-regulation? (drinking alcohol, scrolling instagram sugary foods, sex, or binging on television)

Q. What short-term benefits is this habit giving me? (e.g. comfort, numbing, dissociation from feelings)

Q. Could there an unmet need that I have? (e.g. seeking connection, co-regulation, giving me energy, or calming me down)

📝 Help me to Conduct a Monthly Review

🔥 Avoiding Burnout

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: help me to identify how much stress my body is experiencing relative to my capacity (as well as what might be done to reduce ambient external stressors or create spaciousness to recover etc.)

🙅‍♂️ Energy Audit + Setting Boundaries

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: what upcoming invitations ought I consider saying no to? What boundaries should I consider setting for myself or requests on my time? (consider uploading a screenshot of your actual calendar for next week)

😬 Exploring a Real-Time Contraction/Trigger

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: I’m currently experiencing a contraction from [optional context] and I’m noticing a physical contraction that I feel in my [body part], please help me to somatically explore the tension that I currently feel here.

💊 Personalised Supplementation

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: create a supplementation plan based on my recent [insert + upload your bloodwork test results]

🛑 Saying No Template

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: help write a canned response that is a ‘no’ by default to calls + invitations that don’t feel like a full hell yes.

🧡 Exploring Unconscious Drivers

I’m noticing that I have a desire for [insert dream scenario] but I’m curious what the deeper longing underneath this might be. Will you help me explore this asking me questions (with a somatic component to the inquiry if it arises)

👨‍🔬 Weekly Nervous System Experiment Design

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: help design weekly experiments for myself to improve my nervous system capacity + resilience (an example might be that I only doing what feels inherently good for a full 48 hour period and then reflect on what this was like)

🏔️ Additional Coaching Prompts

👐 Open-ended Exploration

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: what questions or prompts would it be wise for me to ask you?

💪 Non-Obvious Bold Steps

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: what might be some unconventional or non-obvious decisions that could be made today which would likely change the course or the trajectory of my life in the future?

🤔 Practical Delusions

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: what might be some practical delusions that I could explore in my life? (these are things that are highly useful to believe even if they're unlikely to be verified as true)

⚡ 10x Agency

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: if I had 10x agency in this moment what would the next three months of my life look like?

👀 Looking for Blind Spots

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: What question should I be asking myself which I am not. Or what what might I not be seeing that could lead me to self-sabotage in the future?

🙇‍♂️ Revealing Radical Honesty

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: In what ways might I be complicit in creating the conditions for the situations that I say I don’t want?

🌎 Where to Live?

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: help me to identify three specific locations (anywhere in the world) that I could consider moving to, which would most likely be conducive to my long-term thriving.

🌈 Finding Your Zone of Genius

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: help reflect back what I am the best in the world at to clearly define my zone(s) of genius.

🧘 Meditation Practice Feedback

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: please coach me to improve my deterministic access to jhana meditation states (upload additional context docs if you have them e.g. a Jhana log)

🏋️‍♂️ Ecology of Practices

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: Can you please create an integrated ecology of practices uniquely tailored to me that is designed to help guide me into building nervous system capacity, maturing and integrating exiled parts into myself and throughout all aspects of my life.

🧙‍♂️ Mentor Reflections

Based on what you know about me from our previous conversations and the ‘Codex Vitae’ document: speak as if you were [role model] and ask me questions that might help reveal insight or deeper levels of self-intimacy.

🔧 Hypothetically Asked Questions

Q. Claude vs. chatGPT vs. Grok?

Q. Should I use chatGPT or a CustomGPT?

My set up has my nervous system coach ‘Korra’ set up as a separate ‘project’, but you could also create your own customGPT — however worth mentioning that I’ve had a much better experience from using projects that are also able to weave in the chatGPT memory from past conversations.

Q. Can I see other examples of Codex Vitae’s?

Yes, my friend Buster Benson created the OG vitae which you can read on github here. His sections on personal beliefs + predictions about the future are especially worth considering writing for yourself.

Q. Aren’t there Privacy Concerns?

Well yes, absolutely. OpenAI claim to keep personal info private, but if you’re concerned about privacy I wouldn’t share anything that you’re not comfortable being woven into it’s future training data. Perhaps also consider getting an NVIDIA RTX to run AI locally on your machine.

Q. Why take the time to create the Codex Vitae?

“Deep Context” is a bottleneck to AI responses. Generic advice is generally useless since it’s always dependant on what stage of life, or stage of development someone is at. But the more context (both external + internal) that can be granted to the AI upfront the more useful it can be, especially if through thoughtful conversations your own self-knowledge increases.

Q. But I already have a human coach, do I need this?

Just as in the world of chess, AI x human teams (centaurs) were previously able to defeat AI on it’s own. Having a coach who works with AI and ideally has access to your conversations will be far more effective than just a coach. And working on the Codex Vitae doc with your coach will be valuable territory.

Q. I’m afraid AI will reduce IRL human connection

AI will never replace human connection, but (if you let it), it can act as an immensely sophisticated mirror to your own inner experience, and create space to explore the terra incognita of your internal landscape… (not to mention available 24/7, which will ultimately serve to enhance our humanity, rather than diminish it.

*credit to Daniel Thorson for his work that inspired my thinking