ChatGPT Secret Codes: Which Ones Actually Work?

A Medium post doing the rounds claims that 99% of ChatGPT users don't know about 20 "secret codes" - keywords like ELI5, CHAIN_OF_THOUGHT, and DEVIL'S_ADVOCATE that supposedly unlock hidden modes in the model.

The framing is misleading, but the underlying point isn't.

ChatGPT doesn't have hidden command parsing and there's no secret menu. What's actually happening is more useful: large language models (LLMs, the type of AI that generates text by predicting what word comes next) are trained on huge amounts of text where certain shorthand has specific meanings. "TL;DR" reliably precedes summaries online. "ELI5" comes from a Reddit community known for plain-language explanations. The model has seen these patterns thousands of times and learned what kind of output usually follows. So these aren't cheat codes, they're prompt patterns. Some genuinely change the output. A few are theatre.

We've created a cheatsheet to download at the bottom of the post with the most useful codes we could find.

Here are the most useful secret codes we've come across:

• ELI5— Strips out jargon and explains with analogies. Genuinely useful.
• TL;DR — Two-sentence summary of pasted text. Works reliably.
• JARGONIZE — Inverse of ELI5. Adds industry language. Works, but "rewrite this formally" gets the same result.
• MOOD: [emotion] — Overrides the default helpful tone. Works for creative writing.
• VOICE: [character]— Roleplay framing. Works, but it's just a stylised version of "write in the style of."
• FORMAT: TABLE— Forces output into a grid. Useful, especially with specified columns.
• OUTPUT: JSON— Returns raw data instead of prose. Essential if you're feeding it into code.
• ASCII_ART — Mostly novelty. But fun to try out.
• DIAGRAM: MERMAID — Returns flowchart code you can paste into a Mermaid renderer. Underrated.
• LISTIFY — Converts messy paragraphs into bullets. Good for meeting notes and transcripts.

The rest of this post is for OFFULTRA subscribers. Below: the full list of secret codes (or at least the ones worth memorising)...