A Codex Vitae — Latin for "Book of Life" — is a personal operating document that captures who you are, what you believe, and how you work best. The concept was popularized by Buster Benson, who described it as a living document you could use to reconstruct your identity if you lost all your memories.
This version is designed for a specific purpose: to serve as a context document for both yourself and AI assistants.
When you share your Codex Vitae with an AI (like Claude or ChatGPT), it helps the AI understand your values, how you think, and what matters to you — so its responses can be more aligned, more relevant, and more you.
A structured Markdown document that might include:
The categories will emerge based on what's true for you — there's no fixed template.
Time investment: ~20-30 minutes, though you can move faster if you already know yourself well.
Already have conversation history with your AI assistant? The prompt will ask if you'd like to incorporate what it already knows about you from previous conversations — saving you time and building on existing context.