My ChatGPT Hotkey
Please Note: To follow this guide -
- You will need to provide your credit card details for a paid OpenAI account
- Be willing to spend a few dollars a month
One of my fondest memories from my first few weeks at University was getting access to the postgrad Honours Computer Lab to use WebCrawler! Now, access to Google is almost taken for granted as we check sports scores, convert from one language to another or find the time in a different location in the world. If you're technical or not, achieving the same level of integration with ChatGPT will certainly help you harness the power of this tool and will hopefully give us the edge in our day to day work.
You might have used ChatGPT via chat.openai.com or using an App like Poe. However, the "friction" (albeit slight) may put you off using it.
For chat.openai.com:
- You have to navigate to the website
- Sign in - or verify that you're human
- Then type or question
For Poe:
- You have to unlock your device
- Find and open the App
- Type your question (on a device)
In this quick guide, I provide the 2 simple steps to make it as seamless as the following:
Step #1: OpenAI Account Setup
1. Set up a Paid account
Sign up for a Personal account at platform.openai.com. Change it to a "Paid" (Pay as you go) account by providing your credit card details under "Payment methods".
2. Set your Usage Limit
To control my spend and to prevent costs from "running away", I set a Usage Limit. My maximum budget is $10 (~ZAR 200) and I want to be notified when it reaches $5 (~ZAR 100). As you will note from later on in this post, my usage is nowhere close to these limits.
3. Generate an API Key
We will need to generate an API key as we are integrating into OpenAI programmatically.
Quick summary:
- We set up an OpenAI account
- Set it to Paid by providing our Credit Card details
- Controlled our spend by setting a Usage Limit
- Generated an API key
Step #2: ScriptKit
1. Install
Install ScriptKit for your Operating System. This is an incredible tool and it essentially allows a super-simple programmatic (JavaScript) interface to run a "macro" or sequence of steps. Don't be put off by the "developer" reference. You can choose to use as much or as little as you need. Also, we will be using the "built-in" ChatGPT plugin - so no coding needed.
2. Launch
ScriptKit runs as a background process and you can invoke it by using a "hotkey".
- For Mac, the hotkey is: CMD ;
- For Windows, the hotkey is: CTRL ;
Select ChatGPT (as highlighted in the image above).
3. Configure (once-off)
For the first launch of ChatGPT, you will need to provide the API key (from the OpenAI setup above).
This is stored in your home folder in: ~/.kenv/env
Quick summary:
- We installed ScriptKit - which is the tool we use to access ChatGPT
- We learnt how to launch ScriptKit with a hotkey
- Configured ScriptKit by providing the OpenAI API key
Finally, time to test!
- Launch ScriptKit (with the hotkey for your operating system)
- Select ChatGPT
- Type in your question and press Enter!
Usage Monitoring
As you will note from the Usage graph below, my usage for the month of May is less than 5 US cents (approximately ZAR 1).
At the time of this publication, OpenAPI charges $0.002 per 1K tokens for the gpt-3.5-turbo model. To find out more about tokens, please see the OpenAI documentation here.
I would also suggest frequently checking in on your usage in the OpenAI console to track your spend and learn more about billing.
Finally, I just want to highlight that there are a number of ways to integrate ChatGPT into your work environment - this is just the way I am currently using it. I would be really keen to learn the approaches that you are using that might be free and also works as seamlessly. Another option which springs to mind is using Bing Search. You will need to install Microsoft Edge.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to reach out via LinkedIn or rennay@rennay.dev
