How do you organize your work with ChatGPT Projects?

If you use ChatGPT for real work, your sidebar probably looks like a drawer of loose papers: dozens of chats with half-remembered titles, and the same background explained again and again. Projects, which OpenAI added on December 13 for Plus, Team and Pro subscribers, fix that by giving related work its own space.

A Project bundles three things: a set of chats, files you upload, and custom instructions, meaning standing directions that apply to every chat in the Project. TechCrunch compared the result to a folder in Notion or Google Drive. The difference from a plain folder is that ChatGPT reads the contents. Every conversation in a Project shares its files and instructions, so you set the context once.

What a Project can do

According to OpenAI's release notes, chats inside a Project run on GPT-4o and can use the same tools as regular chats:

That combination makes a Project a good home for any task that lasts more than one sitting: a report, a course, a renovation plan, a job search.

A worked setup: a grant application

Suppose a volunteer for a small community food bank is preparing a grant application due next month. Here is how to set up a Project for it.

1. Create and name the Project. Use a name you'll recognize in six weeks, such as "Food bank grant 2025."

2. Write the instructions. These are read at the start of every chat in the Project, so put the facts and preferences you would otherwise repeat:

This project is a grant application for a volunteer-run community food bank.
- Audience: a regional foundation's review committee. Tone: clear, warm, factual. No exaggeration.
- Always use the figures in "annual-report.pdf" and "budget.xlsx". If a number isn't in those files, say so instead of estimating.
- The foundation's guidelines are in "grant-guidelines.pdf". Check every section against them, especially word limits.
- Write in Canadian English. Use short paragraphs and plain words.

3. Upload the reference files. Add the documents the instructions mention: the funder's guidelines, last year's annual report and the budget spreadsheet. Remove anything personal, such as names of clients or volunteers' phone numbers, before uploading.

4. Work in separate chats, one per job. Instead of one endless conversation, start a new chat in the Project for each task:

• "Summarize the guidelines as a checklist of required sections and limits."
• "Draft the 'Community need' section, 300 words maximum."
• "Using the budget file, build a table of costs by category and check that it adds up."
• "Read the full draft against the guidelines and list anything missing."

Each chat already knows the instructions and files, so your prompts can stay short. Separate chats also keep each conversation focused, and the Project keeps them all in one place when you come back next week.

5. Review what comes back. Treat every number and claim as a draft to check against your own files. The instruction to say when a figure is missing helps, but it doesn't guarantee that ChatGPT will never make an error.

How are Projects different from GPTs?

They solve different problems. A GPT, introduced in November 2023, is a custom version of ChatGPT that you build for a purpose and can use again and again. It has its own instructions and knowledge files too, but it can also be shared: kept private, offered to your company, or published for anyone. Builders can give a GPT actions, which connect it to outside services through their APIs. Think of a GPT as a tool: "Recipe adapter," "Lesson plan helper," "Our returns policy assistant."

A Project is a workspace for your own ongoing work. It is personal rather than published, it keeps the actual conversations together, and it is built around one job that has a beginning and an end, not a task you repeat for many different people.

A simple rule: if you'd describe it as "my work on X," make a Project. If you'd describe it as "a helper that does Y," and especially if others should use it too, build a GPT. The two work well side by side; you might use a GPT you built for drafting newsletters while keeping each issue's chats and source files in its own Project.