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Your lens

Your lens is a few standing rules, in your own words, for how PI talks to you and writes for you: the terms you use, the stance you want, the shape of an answer. Once a rule is kept, PI follows it in every conversation and in every document it writes for you, without being reminded.

A lens changes how PI says things. It never changes what PI does: PI still grounds every statement in a Claim, still asks before it saves or searches outside, still cites its sources. A rule that asks for any of that is refused with a short explanation.

Examples of rules​

  • Write "zero-knowledge proof" and "Lightning Network" in full on first use, never "ZKP" or "LN" in prose, and give the BIP number whenever you name a protocol change.
  • Treat any result reported without a sample size or a confidence interval as preliminary, and say so before you summarise it.
  • When you compare studies, open with the strongest disagreement between them, give each study's method in one sentence, and only then its conclusion.
  • Write for a peer-reviewed audience: formal register, no marketing adjectives, and name the claim behind every empirical statement.

A rule is one or two sentences, up to 280 characters. You can keep up to ten.

Adding a rule​

In the chat, type /lens followed by the rule:

/lens Treat any result without a confidence interval as preliminary, and say so.

PI reads the rule back in one line and asks whether to keep it. Nothing is kept until you say yes. You can also say it in words, "from now on call it Lightning", and PI will offer to keep it as a rule.

Or open My Research Profile → Your lens (/profile?section=lens), type the rule in the box and add it. On your own profile page there is no confirmation step. If you have no rules yet, the page shows a few examples you can start from.

Longer guidance: upload a lens​

When a rule does not fit in two sentences, say a whole way of reviewing or a house style, write it as a short markdown file and upload it: type /lens-upload in the chat, or use Your lens → Upload a lens on your profile. Both open the same window, which shows two example files; drag your file in or browse for it, then press Upload. The file follows the shape that assistants now share: an optional header with a name and a one-line description, then the guidance itself.

---
name: Reviewer voice
description: How to phrase a critical review of a method paper
---

Write as a sceptical but fair reviewer. Name the strongest counter-argument
before the result. ...

PI sees the name and the description on every turn and reads the full text only when it applies to what you asked. A lens file is plain text or markdown, up to 64 KB, with up to 8,000 characters of guidance. You can keep two at a time. The same rule applies to a file as to a typed rule: it may shape wording, stance and terms, never PI's operations.

Seeing, pausing and removing rules​

Type /lens on its own in the chat to see your rules. Say "pause the spelling rule" or type /lens delete spelling to change one; PI matches on part of the rule's name. On Your lens every rule and every uploaded lens has pause, resume and delete buttons. A paused rule stays saved and is not applied.

What a lens is not​

A lens is not your research preferences. The areas you follow and how deep you want to go shape which Claims PI shows you; they live in Research preferences. A lens shapes how PI talks about them. Nor is it a research alert: an alert is a standing watch that emails you, see Research alerts.