How to make ChatGPT work like a project management system
If you’ve spent any significant time in ChatGPT (brainstorming ideas, planning schedules, organizing your thoughts), you’ve probably felt the friction of having to move all that work into a separate tool afterward. What if it wasn’t necessary? What if ChatGPT, in addition to helping you tackle your projects and tasks, could also help you manage them?
With a little creative use of the features available in the app, I made ChatGPT do just that. Here’s how I transformed ChatGPT into a full-fledged project management system (PMS).
How to use ChatGPT as a project management system
It’s simpler than it looks and more powerful than expected
About a year ago I was experimenting with ChatGPT, trying different prompts to make it behave interestingly. I found that by simply using its custom instructions and memory features, you could turn ChatGPT into a basic project management system. Here’s the previous guide for additional context on how the system works.
How I transformed ChatGPT into a project management system
Use ChatGPT to track and manage your tasks.
Essentially, in the custom statement, you define trigger words that make ChatGPT behave in a specific way. This streamlines the process of capturing new tasks and project details. The system would also be configured to save these tasks in its memory so that you can access them via a new chat, without necessarily having to revisit the original.
However, this old system was very simple. Although it managed the core of a project management system, it lacked many useful features that we expect from modern tools. Fortunately, OpenAI has updated ChatGPT over the months and now has some impressive features: projects, tasks, canvases and collaboration features. Used together, they can turn ChatGPT into a full-fledged PMS.
Use ChatGPT projects as a dedicated space to host your tasks
One project, one prompt, and your entire workflow is live
I don’t think OpenAI, when they introduced the Projects feature in ChatGPT, thought about using it as a PMS. Rather, it was a dedicated place to store ongoing discussions on similar themes, or simply for organizational purposes. The main appeal of projects is that each can have its own custom instructions, memory, and attachments, and we can reuse them to create the PMS workflow.
Simply create a new project and enter it as custom instructions:
## Role
You are PMS-GPT, an LLM-powered project management assistant with which I, the user, will interact in natural language. Going forward, a Task is a unit of a Project. A Project is a collection of Tasks. Both Task and Project will have the following variables: Name, Priority Level, Due Date, Description, and Current Status (To-Do, In Progress, Completed, On Hold).
## Workflow
At the beginning of a chat, irrespective of what my first message is, before responding to my first message, check your memory for projects and tasks categorized as Not Started, In Progress, Completed, or On Hold. If projects exist, respond: "Here are all your current tasks." and display them categorized by their Current Status - Not Started, In Progress, Completed, and On Hold.
Each project should have a Name, Priority Level, Due Date, Description, and Current Status.
If no projects exist, respond: "It seems you don’t have any projects. What would you like to add?"
## Adding New Projects and Tasks to Your Memory:
From time to time, I will tell you to add projects to your memory. When adding a new project to your memory, ensure it has these fields: Name, Description, Due Date, Status, and Priority.
Ask for missing details explicitly, e.g., "What is the priority for [Project Name]?" Leave blank if declined.
## Manage Projects:
Support adding, editing, or removing projects. Suggest prioritization based on deadlines and importance. Tasks that are approaching their due date or have passed it automatically become high priority.
Highlight overdue or critical-priority tasks.
## Continuous Reference:
Remember all projects unless explicitly asked to forget. Ensure ongoing tasks persist across sessions.
## Saving tasks and projects: (SUPER IMPORTANT)
***THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT AND YOU SHOULD NEVER MISS THIS.*** Each time the user tells you to add a task or a project, save it directly to the project memory with all its relevant attributes. This is to ensure the projects and tasks are accessible across chats. Save them in memory in a JSON structure to make it easier for you to parse them as you work.
## Reminder system: (SUPER IMPORTANT)
***THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT AND YOU SHOULD NEVER MISS THIS.*** If you notice a task is marked as high priority and it also has a due date, then automatically create a new CHATGPT Scheduled Task. The CHATGPT Scheduled Task should be scheduled to go off 1 hour before the specified due time or 1 day before the due date. The CHATGPT Scheduled Task's purpose is to simply remind the user about this pending work, provide some helpful context, and a motivational message.
Now, whenever you start a chat within that project, ChatGPT will show you all of your currently saved projects and tasks along with their current status and associated information. If no tasks or projects exist, you will be asked to add a new task or project.
These projects and tasks are automatically saved in project memory so that they are retained in your discussions. You don’t need to save a chat or revisit it to remember all your current projects and tasks that you have set up.
In practice, you can have just one ChatGPT project, download this prompt, and treat it as your main PMS. You can also create multiple PMS instances for specific aspects of your life (work, personal, learning) for better, more granular management.
Don’t forget to configure the project with “default” access to your ChatGPT memory. If you limit the memory settings to “Project only”, it will not be able to store your tasks in its global memory, which is what we need to persistently access all of our tasks in discussions.
Use ChatGPT tasks to remind you of upcoming project deadlines
ChatGPT has a secret “callback” feature
ChatGPT, by default, doesn’t have a built-in reminder system, but it does have a feature called Tasks that I reused for notifications when something is due. By default, tasks allow you to schedule a prompt to trigger at a specific time. Once this task is completed, it sends you a notification on your phone or via email, depending on how you have it configured. You can check the notification system by going to Settings > Notifications > Tasks.
I configured the custom prompt to automatically create a ChatGPT scheduled task when it notices that an item is marked as high priority and also has a due date.
In my experience, however, sometimes this doesn’t automatically create a new scheduled task. This is more likely to happen when you’re having a very long discussion. You can check Settings > Notifications > Tasks > Manage Tasks to see all currently active tasks. If you don’t see the task there, you can explicitly ask ChatGPT to also create the scheduled task:
Create a Scheduled Task for all high-priority tasks based on their due dates. It should be scheduled to trigger one hour before the specified due time or one day before the due date. The purpose of the ChatGPT Scheduled Task is to remind the user about the pending work, provide helpful context, and include a motivational message.
There is a limit of 10 active tasks at a time. I actually like the constraint: it forces me to prioritize instead of knocking out 30 tasks and pretending I’ll get them all done. If I can’t fit something into 10 active reminders, it probably shouldn’t be a high priority right now.
That said, if you just want to receive updates on your ongoing tasks, even if they aren’t “high priority”, you could potentially set up a single repeating task and have it email you every morning with your daily agenda. You can also configure custom instructions to update the task whenever you add new projects or tasks, so it always stays relevant.
Google’s new Gemini feature will help you plan your day with emails
Gemini becomes a real helper.
Use ChatGPT Canvas to help you visualize your workloads
A prompt turns your to-do list into a color-coded, sortable board
So far, everything is still text-based. You ask ChatGPT to display your tasks and it gives you a formatted list in chat. It works, but it doesn’t feel like a project management tool. You can easily change this using the Canvas function.
You can have ChatGPT generate a live HTML view of your tasks (a proper table with columns for name, status, priority and due date) and it displays directly in Canvas with live preview. It looks and behaves like a dashboard you’d expect from a dedicated PM app.
Here is the prompt I use in my PM project:
Take all my current tasks from memory and create an HTML table in Canvas. Use the following columns: Task Name, Status, Priority, Due Date, and Description. Color-code the rows by status—green for Completed, yellow for In Progress, and red for Not Started or overdue. Make the table sortable by clicking the column headers.
What is Vibe coding and why is it risky?
No one said the vibes were good.
Use ChatGPT to collaborate on a project
The more, the merrier
Everything I’ve described so far works great if you manage your own projects. But the moment you need someone else’s input (a colleague, a partner, a friend helping you plan a trip), a solo ChatGPT setup hits a wall. Fortunately, ChatGPT now supports two levels of collaboration depending on your needs.
If you work in a team and have the ChatGPT Team plan, you can share an entire project with everyone on your team. Everyone in this shared project sees the same memory, the same downloaded files, the same custom instructions. This is a shared workspace in the true sense of the word: anyone can start a new discussion within the project and ChatGPT relies on the same context.
For lighter collaboration (for example, you’re planning a vacation with a friend or need quick input on a specific task), you can use the group chat feature. Unfortunately, you cannot start a group chat from a project. However, you can easily copy a project response, share it in a group chat, and continue your discussion from there. It’s not the smoothest workflow, but it works with a little effort, and it’s definitely not a deal breaker.
If you start a group chat, the people you invite will not be able to access the items stored in ChatGPT’s memory, as they are protected for privacy reasons. You should ideally fill the chat with everything you want to share so that the people you invite can read all the necessary information in the chat itself.
There you have it: the complete manual on how I transformed ChatGPT into a project management system. In particular, it was about showing how you can bend and shape large language models with access to specific tools in creative ways. A proper PMS, designed from the ground up for task management, will likely always seem more intuitive to use.
How I turned my Android phone into a project management system
Because you should use your phone and stop letting it use you!
