You've seen these posts. "10 secret codes that make ChatGPT 10x better." Big list, big numbers, everybody saves it.
I'm going to give you the list, because a lot of them genuinely do work and you should have them.
But first I'm going to tell you the part that gets left out, because it's the part that actually makes you better at this.
They're not secret and they're not codes.
There is no hidden developer menu. Nobody at Anthropic or OpenAI built a /truth command. You could type PINEAPPLE and if you'd told it what PINEAPPLE meant, it would work exactly the same.
What's really happening is this: these models were trained on basically everything written on the internet. So they already know what "explain it like I'm 10" means. They know what a red team is. They know what the Socratic method is. When you type ELI10, you're not unlocking anything. You're just using one word instead of a sentence to point at a style of answering it already understands.
That's it. That's the trick.
Which means the real skill isn't collecting codes. It's knowing you can make up your own. More on that at the bottom.
The ones that actually work
I've run all of these. Some are great, a couple are junk, and I'll tell you which is which.
The ones I use constantly
ELI10 — Explain it like I'm 10 years old. The single most useful one on this whole list, and it's the one people skip because it feels like admitting you don't know something. Use it constantly. Anything you half understand, ask again with ELI10 on the front and watch how much better it lands.
TRUTHMODE — Stop agreeing with me and be honest. These models are built to be agreeable and it makes them useless for feedback. Ask "is my pricing any good" and you'll get told you're doing great. Put TRUTHMODE on the front and you'll get an actual answer. This one changed how I use AI more than anything else.
REDTEAM — Attack my idea and find the holes. Same family as TRUTHMODE but pointed at a specific plan instead of at you. Paste in your idea, put REDTEAM on it, and let it tear the thing apart before a customer does.
/human — Make it sound like a person wrote it. Works, but not as well as anyone claims. It'll strip out the worst of the robot voice. It will not make it sound like you, because it has no idea who you are. If you want it to sound like you, that's a different job and it's the skills guide.
The ones worth knowing
80/20 — What's the highest-leverage version of this. Good when you're staring at a big list of things to do and everything feels equally urgent. It isn't.
SOCRATES — Teach me by asking me questions instead of answering. Genuinely great for learning something, genuinely annoying when you just want the answer. Know which mode you're in.
ALT3 — Give me 3 different versions of that. Underrated. Your first answer is rarely the best one, and this makes it show you the other roads without you having to ask 3 times.
X10THINK — Think harder before you answer. Does help on complicated questions. Does nothing on simple ones. Not magic, just a nudge to slow down.
META — Look at my question before you answer it. This one is sneaky-good. It'll often come back and tell you that you asked the wrong question, which is usually true.
The ones I'd skip
GODMODE, IQ200, L99 — "respond at genius level." These do almost nothing measurable. The model isn't holding back a smarter version of itself waiting for the password. It'll write longer and use bigger words, which is not the same as being right. This is the part of these lists that's there for the screenshot.
HORMOZI and any other "act like [famous person]" — Mixed. It'll do an impression of how that person talks. It does not have their judgment. Fine for a tone, bad for a decision.
Rest of it's yours
Drop your email and the whole thing opens up right here. No waiting on a confirmation, no download, nothing to install.
You'll also get the new ones as I make them. Leave whenever, no hard feelings.
How to actually use them
Type the code, then your question. That's the whole mechanic.
TRUTHMODE
Here's my pricing for the last 6 months. [paste]
Am I charging enough?You can stack 2. Don't stack 5, it just gets confused about what you want.
TRUTHMODE + ELI10
Explain what's actually wrong with my numbers here. [paste]And you can put one on after the fact, in the same conversation:
REDTEAM that.That works because it's just talking. You're not entering commands, you're telling it what you want, briefly.
Now write your own
This is the part nobody sells you, because there's nothing to sell.
Once you understand that a code is just a nickname for an instruction, you can make one for the thing you need, which is always going to be more useful than a generic list off the internet.
Do it like this. Once, at the start of a chat:
For the rest of this conversation:
When I type CLIENT, rewrite whatever I just wrote as if I'm
sending it to a customer. Polite, short, no jargon, no
apologizing.
When I type SO WHAT, tell me why what I just wrote matters to
the person reading it, or tell me it doesn't.
When I type CHEAP, give me the version of this plan that costs
nothing.Now those are your codes. They work for the rest of that chat.
And if you want them to work in every chat, forever, without setting them up each time, that's a skill, and it takes about 10 minutes. Here's how to build one.
The honest summary
The lists are fine. Some of the codes are genuinely useful and I use 4 of them every day.
But the reason they get posted over and over isn't that they're powerful. It's that they're easy to screenshot and they make AI feel like it has a cheat menu. It doesn't. It has a conversation, and you're just learning to be quicker at it.
The people who get the most out of these tools aren't the ones with the longest list of codes. They're the ones who figured out they could just... say what they want.
Try TRUTHMODE on something real tonight. Something you actually want a straight answer about. That one's worth the whole guide.