ShortlyAI: Getting Started Guide

Welcome, if you’re reading this, you’ve either just purchased ShortlyAI and are looking to get the most out of it — or you’re thinking about buying Shortly.

Either way, in this quick guide, I want to show you the most essential things to understand about ShortlyAI and getting the content you want from it -- and if you want a glimpse at what ShortlyAI can do for you check out my Shortly Compendium.

Let me start by saying ShortlyAI is a blank canvas AI-writing assistant with unlimited text generations. This means you can use it for almost any writing you need. The magic is in its simplicity — you get what you ask for, and you can ask as often as you like (no credit limits like other tools).

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What is GPT-3 AI?

ShortlyAI is powered by GPT-3 — a unidirectional predictive text algorithm with an enormous “brain,” trained on content from the internet and books. It primarily uses this memory to predict the next words and sentences you would have typed when you hit Shortly’s “write for me” button.

Who is OpenAI?

From time to time, you’ll hear of OpenAI. They’re the team behind GPT-3. The most important thing to understand about OpenAI is they set the rules on how tools like ShortlyAI can use the GPT-3 AI technology.

The AI-Writing “Dance”

The dance is the best way to work with the AI to produce quality content fast. Essentially you write some, your AI assistant writes some, then you write more, and it writes more too. It continues until you and your partner have created something beautiful.

You do this dance while sprinkling in special commands to create your content efficiently.

Understanding Context

Context is the text content Shortly will send to the AI to request the content you’re seeking. When using the “write for me” button, the context is everything in the article brief, title, and the content above the current mouse cursor location.

You’ll sometimes want to “cut off” the context to prevent some parts from interfering with the content you’re currently writing. The /// command is the context cutoff ruler. Use it to block the context you don’t want to be used in the content you’re working on now.

Learn more about context here.

The /Commands

The / (slash) commands are tools you can use to get more from the AI. Here’s what are available:

  • /shorten [text (max 200 characters)]
  • /rewrite [text (max 160 characters)]
  • /expand [text (max 120 characters)]
  • /instruct [text]

Shorten will rewrite a passage of text into a more concise version of the passage. Rewrite will attempt to rewrite the passage uniquely. Expand add more, or develop, the passage of text.

These three commands, shorten, rewrite, and expand — refer to as the “refine” commands. They are tools you use on existing text; they have a special context — only the text within the [text] part of the command is used — nothing else.

Instruct is a special command. I refer to it as the universal command. A command where you act as if you’re asking your AI writing assistant for specific content. For example, “/instruct [write an answer target for how do honeybees find their way home] or /instruct [write a poem about cherry blossoms blooming in Tokyo].”

The sky is the limit with the instruct command — experiment to find unique ways of using it.

Even the context is unique for instruct. It does not use the article brief and title but does use everything inside the [text] AND the content above it in the document you’re writing. And yes, this is another place you can use /// when you need to control context.

Usually, you’ll type out each command to use them. There are also keyboard shortcuts available to help you work faster.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Everything in Shortly is available in a keyboard shortcut. If you become accustomed to using them they will improve your productivity quite a lot. Here are the shortcuts:

  • CMD+[ = Shorten (highlighted text)
  • CMD+P = Rewrite (highlighted text)
  • CMD+] = Expand (highlighted text)
  • CMD+ENTER = “Write for me” if nothing highlighted or runs /instruct on highlighted text
  • CMD+; = Undo
  • CMD+\ = Redo
  • CMD+Z = Undo

To use the keyboard shortcuts with the /commands, you need to highlight some text within your article.

Edit and Plagiarism Check

Just like you would check the content written by a junior writer on your team, always check and edit content from your AI assistant. The primary things to look out for are statements of fact and plagiarism.

Often the AI will reference a fact in the text it provides you. This could be a person’s name, a landmark, statistics and numbers, etc. It may give a fact that doesn’t perfectly match your content.

Also, the AI was trained using loads of content from the internet. While GPT-3 AI does a good job producing unique content, there are times with it pulls a passage from another author’s content. To avoid issues, always run your documents through a plagiarism tool like Grammarly or CopyScape.

Learn More

And that’s a wrap. You now have the most essential parts of ShortlyAI, and I wish you the best with your content creation workflows. Don't forget, one of the most powerful things about Shortly is the blank canvas interface and the unlimited generations. Experiment — you don't have credit limits preventing you.

If you’d like to learn more, I have many more guides specifically for ShortlyAI here — on the AI Content Dojo. And if you'd like to join the AI Content Dojo (free), I'll let you know when new guides are available. No spam, I promise.

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Take care.