Discover your Hogwarts House with ChatGPT

This article was originally published in the Idea Kitchen (simple recipes for using AI) newsletter. Subscribe here to get the next recipe!

Who said AI had to be all work and no play?

Today, I’m sharing something for all the Harry Potter nerds out there: a magical Sorting Hat experience powered by ChatGPT. You’ll get a personalized house assignment and a custom-written Hogwarts backstory that’s weirdly accurate.

Even better? You’ll see how a well-crafted prompt works behind the scenes to deliver truly magical results.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Difficulty Level: Easy

🧂Ingredients:

• A ChatGPT account (free or paid)
• Sorting Hat prompt (included below)
• Optional: Personality test results

📖 Instructions:

1. Open ChatGPT & Choose Your Model: Click the dropdown and select a model. If you have a paid account, I recommend using the o3 model for best results.

2. Paste the Full Sorting Hat Prompt: No coding required, everything is provided for you to copy/paste.

This is a long one, so I can’t display it here like normal. View the full prompt here. Shoutout to Rousseau Kazi for being the author behind this prompt!

3. Understand the Prompt Structure: Here’s how it works -

• <identity> – Role/Persona: Adopts the voice of the Sorting Hat

• <examples> – Few-Shot Demonstrations: Shows successful sorting stories for each house
• <user_personality_summary> – Your Traits: Uses your chat memory to pull your 10 strengths + 10 weaknesses to determine your house

• <houses> – Reference Guide: Gives the AI canonical house characteristics
• <constraints> – Hard rules & output format: Ensures a consistent structure and rich, story-driven result

4. Run the Prompt and Get Sorted: ChatGPT will assign your house, explain why, and write a richly detailed Hogwarts-style scene starring you.

🍽️ Serving Suggestions:

• Self-Discovery: Use it as a fun personality reflection
• Sort Your Entire Friend Group: Make a night of it. Swap stories and debate who really belongs in Slytherin
• Team Icebreaker: Run the prompt with coworkers and share which house you’re sorted into in your next async check-in or all-hands

Chef’s Insights: Pro Tips & Limitations

🧑‍🍳 Pro Tips:

Add Your Traits: If you haven’t used ChatGPT often (or at all), it won’t have a memory to pull in your strength/weakness information to determine your house. If that’s the case, you may see the above result.

If that happens, either manually list your top strengths and weaknesses, or take a personality assessment like Myers-Briggs and upload the results.

Upgrade the Story: Play around with changing out the text in the <example> section to tune it to your own style.

Create a Trading Card: Follow up with this prompt to get a shareable sorting card to send to others:

Create a vertical “Wizard House Sorting Card” in a classic, hand‑painted storybook style.
• Dimensions: 1024×1536 px, high resolution.
• Background: softly illuminated aged parchment.
• Decorative frame: vintage gold filigree with faint arcane glyphs (original design, not copied from existing franchises).
• Top centre: stylised crest featuring a majestic [{House} crest] painted in rich [house palette].
• Beneath crest, elegant ribbon text: “You’re in {House} {Emoji}” in elegant wizarding script, inked in {House Primary Color}.
• Mid‑panel text block (calligraphy‑like):  
    – Line 1 (bold): [Your Name]  
    – Line 2: a brief motto, e.g. “Courage & Daring”  

• Subtle swirling house‑coloured magic around the border—sparks and wisps of light. No copyrighted symbols or wording.
• Bottom ribbon: “ChatGPT Sorting Hat Approved • Year {Year}”.

• Warm candle‑lit ambience, slight vignette, crisp line‑work, no watermarks or signatures.
Colors to use:
    – Gryffindor #7F0909 & #FFC500
    – Hufflepuff #FFDB00 & #000000
    – Ravenclaw  #0E1A40 & #946B2D (or film blue‑silver variant)
    – Slytherin  #1A472A & #C0C0C0

⚠️ Limitations to Keep in Mind:

• Use the o3 model for best results — It has stronger reasoning and better handles the structure of this long, layered prompt
• Be careful tweaking the prompt — Changes to the wording (especially Harry Potter references) can trigger copyright filters and block the output

• Your data matters — If ChatGPT doesn’t “know” you (or your traits aren’t clear), the results may feel generic. Use the personality test tip above to boost accuracy

User Reviews:

Have you tried out the Sorting Hat prompt? Reply and let us know which house you were sorted into!

This article was originally published in the Idea Kitchen (simple recipes for using AI) newsletter. Subscribe here to get the next recipe!