A workshop on building custom AI assistants using Gemini Gems, Claude Projects, and Custom GPTs. Covers the shift from prompt engineering to context engineering, with live demos and best practices for creating personalized AI systems. The speaker emphasizes that the quality of AI output depends on the quality of input ("garbage in, garbage out") and demonstrates how to build custom assistants for travel, content creation, and business needs.
📌 Key Themes
Prompt Engineering vs. Context Engineering: Moving from simple instructions to embedding domain expertise and background data.
Custom AI Assistants: Building personalized AI systems (Gems, Projects, GPTs) tailored to specific roles and needs.
AI as a Partner: Using AI not just as a tool but as an extension of cognitive abilities and a collaborative partner.
Practical Application: Live demos of building custom assistants on Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT for travel, content creation, and business.
User Adoption Challenges: The difficulty of getting users to adopt new platforms, even with powerful AI capabilities.
🧠 Key Concepts
Prompt Engineering
The instruction given to an AI model in natural language.
Focuses on a narrow structure: role, task, format, examples.
Context Engineering
Coined by Andrej Karpathy; involves embedding domain expertise and background data.
Focuses on background data (text, videos, photos) and domain knowledge.
Hallucination
When AI confidently provides an answer that is half-truth or totally incorrect.
Mitigated by uploading specific knowledge and setting guardrails.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
The quality of AI output is directly tied to the quality of input.
Rate Limits
AI tools consume costly GPU resources, leading to usage caps.
API (Application Programming Interface)
A key that allows two or more platforms to connect and work together.
⚙️ Frameworks / Models
1. Context Canvas (Persona Mapping)
Map out ideas before building: role, audience, tone, goal.
Write down negotiables and non-negotiables.
Use a notebook or Google Sheets to draft all ideas.
2. Custom AI Assistant Creation (Three Platforms)
Gemini Gems: Most user-friendly; free version available; simple interface with title, description, system instruction, and knowledge upload.
Claude Projects: Available for paid users; allows uploading knowledge from Google Drive, Notion, GitHub; good for complex tasks and developers.
Custom GPTs: Available for Plus/Pro users; more complex interface; allows disabling web search for strict knowledge adherence; can be shared or monetized.
3. Non-Negotiables for Instructions
Role: Clear persona for the AI assistant.
Task: What the AI should do (e.g., generate image, provide travel advice).
Treating AI like a Google search yields poor results; detailed context is essential.
Context engineering (domain expertise) is more powerful than prompt engineering alone.
Custom AI assistants can serve as personal counselors, travel agents, content creators, or pitch deck reviewers.
The best platform depends on budget and task complexity: Gemini for ease, Claude for complex coding, ChatGPT for long-context research.
Meta-prompting (using AI to build prompts) is a valuable advanced technique.
🧪 Concrete Examples
Travel Assistant: Built a "Global Voyage AI" custom assistant on all three platforms to provide visa requirements, border restrictions, and travel logistics for South Korea.
Dating App (I Am Sethered): A premium dating app built by Kate, focusing on personality, lifestyle, and psychological matching (inspired by Carl Jung).
Community Calendar: A color-coded event calendar for Da Nang to prevent schedule overlaps and centralize event discovery.
Enterprise AI Research Tool: Built with Claude Code, using Gemini for planning, to generate insights from research documents with map-based visualizations.
🚀 Practical Applications
Content Creators: Build a custom assistant to generate blog posts, social media content, or YouTube scripts with a consistent brand voice.
Digital Nomads: Create a travel assistant that provides visa requirements, border crossing tips, and digital connectivity info.
Entrepreneurs: Build a pitch deck reviewer that adopts the persona of a ruthless venture capitalist.
Therapists/Counselors: Upload case studies and psychology knowledge to create a personal AI counseling assistant.
Software Engineers: Use Claude Code with Gemini for planning to build web applications efficiently.
⚠️ Nuances and Limitations
Custom GPTs and Claude Projects are only available on paid plans (Plus/Pro/Max), which can be expensive (e.g., $20/month + 12% VAT in the Philippines).
Gemini Gems is free but may have a less stable user interface due to frequent updates.
AI models can "forget" context mid-conversation due to system updates or memory limitations.
Transferring memory/history between platforms (e.g., ChatGPT to Claude) is possible but may not be fully workable.
User adoption is a major challenge; building functionality is easier than getting people to switch from existing tools (e.g., WhatsApp groups).
🧭 Actionable TL;DR
Map your ideas on paper or a document before building any AI assistant.
Choose your platform: Gemini Gems (free, easy), Claude Projects (complex tasks, coding), Custom GPTs (long-context, research).
Write clear instructions with role, task, and format as non-negotiables.
Upload specific knowledge (PDFs, Google Docs, SOPs) to reduce hallucination and ensure accuracy.
Test and iterate—trial and error is essential to refine your assistant's behavior.
Use meta-prompting: Ask an AI to help you write better prompts for your custom assistant.