Module 1 · Foundations — what ChatGPT is Lesson 3 of 15
The screen: where every control lives
A tour of the interface you will live in — a single column of conversations with a sidebar of history, a file and image upload button, and a model picker in the top corner. Every panel has a reason to exist, and half of them are the difference between a chat and a system.
The concept
The interface of ChatGPT is a single column of conversations with a sidebar of history, a file and image upload button, and a model picker in the top corner. That sentence is worth slowing down on, because the single biggest cause of bad output is not a bad prompt — it is a good prompt typed into the wrong place.
The history list is your memory of what worked. Name your conversations. The temporary or private mode is for anything you would not want in an account's history. The settings panel holds the personal instructions that apply to everything, which is where your context belongs rather than repeated at the top of every message.
Do this once, properly: set your personal instructions to one paragraph about who you are and what you are working on, so you stop retyping it. It takes fifteen minutes and saves you those fifteen minutes every week after.
Worked example
The model picker matters more than it looks: the fast model is for drafts and rewriting, the reasoning model is for problems with steps in them.
Your practice task
Spend fifteen minutes doing nothing but clicking. Open every panel, rename one conversation, and save one setting you will want again. Fluency with the screen is what stops you re-explaining yourself every session.
Do this before moving on. Reading a solution teaches the shape of it; typing it teaches you.
Key takeaway
The interface of ChatGPT is a single column of conversations with a sidebar of history, a file and image upload button, and a model picker in the top corner.
Keep your place in this course
A free account saves which lessons you have finished and unlocks the certificate. The lesson itself stays free to read.
Create free account or sign inCourse complete
You finished every lesson.
Your certificate is ready, and the projects you built are the proof to attach to an application.
Almost there
15 lessons left of 15
Finish every lesson to unlock the certificate. Each one ends in a practice task — do them and the final project brief writes itself.