Notes on Customizing Tools for Travel Work
Custom instructions and checklists help with visas, packing, and timezone math. They do not get to hold your judgment.
[ journal ]
I use language models the way I use packing lists: as a second pair of eyes that still requires mine. Custom instructions live in a project I trust for travel work. They know my constraints. Louisiana origin, Aotearoa-bound, carry-on bias, no rental car as a default, medications I cannot skip. They do not know whether a visa officer will like my documents. That part stays with me.
I ask for checklists, not decisions. Packing: merino count, cable pouch, paper copies, the meds that cannot go in checked luggage I do not check. Visa: documents the public guidance mentions, dated, with a reminder to verify on the official site the morning I submit. Timezone math: if I am in Auckland at 9am Tuesday, what is that in Central Time, and which of these meeting windows is cruel. I still look at a world clock. The model is fast. It is also cheerfully wrong about daylight saving.
What I do not do is paste a client’s contract into a chat and ask it to tell me I am fine. I do not outsource the feeling that a listing’s Wi-Fi paragraph is lying. I do not let a generated itinerary become a plan I cannot defend at 5am in an airport.
Custom instructions are useful when they encode my refusals. Do not suggest a rental car first. Do not suggest I skip sleep for a sunrise. Do not write in the voice of a brochure. Draft a packing list I can argue with. That last part matters. If I cannot argue with it, I am not using a tool. I am obeying a paragraph.
This is not a product tutorial. Products change names and pricing. The practice does not: keep a short brief of your constraints, ask for lists and drafts, verify against primary sources, and keep judgment in the body that will stand at the border desk.
— JV · Dark Heart Labs.