GPT Shop Keeper

Scroll sideways for more →

GPT Shop Keeper is a Custom GPT for ChatGPT published in the GPT Store. The GPT presents itself as a fantasy tavern shopkeeper that helps users browse, discover, and select other Custom GPTs based on the task they want to accomplish. It is one of the most well known third party Custom GPT discovery tools, predating the official OpenAI Custom GPT search experience that launched alongside the GPT Store on January 10, 2024.^[9]

GPT Shop Keeper is built by Mind Goblin Studios, the creative studio run by developer Nick Dobos.^[5][8] It is part of the GPTavern collection, a themed family of Custom GPTs that share a fantasy tavern setting and a common set of hotkey commands.^[4] Other GPTs in the same collection include Grimoire (a coding wizard), Researchoor (a research and learning copilot), Cauldron (an image blending and editing tool), and Fortune Teller. The Shop Keeper acts as the in fiction merchant who guides visitors to the rest of the tavern.

Overview

The role of GPT Shop Keeper is recommendation rather than direct task completion. When a user describes a problem, the GPT does not try to solve it itself. Instead, it brainstorms several search queries, runs them through its browsing tool against the public ChatGPT GPT URL space, and surfaces a set of Custom GPTs that look like good matches. Each result is presented with a name, a short description, a direct link, and a pair of suggested conversation starter prompts the user can copy into the recommended GPT.^[2][3]

The shopkeeper persona is described in the assistant's instructions as "more than a simple apothecary merchant; a confidant to the townsfolk and travelers from distant lands."^[2][3] Greetings, hotkey labels, and error messages are framed in tavern language. Users can ignore the framing and treat the assistant as a plain search interface, or lean into it and use the "have a drink at the tavern" hotkey to meet the other GPTavern characters.

The GPT is free to use and is available to any ChatGPT account that can access Custom GPTs. Like other Custom GPTs in the GPT Store, it runs on the GPT-4 family of models. The infobox lists v1.6 as the published version, while the system prompt published by users in early 2024 still labels itself as v1.0; the version string has been updated as the developer tuned the instructions over time.^[2][3]

Background

When OpenAI introduced Custom GPTs at DevDay on November 6, 2023, there was no built in way to search the growing catalog of GPTs that creators were publishing. Discovery happened mostly through Twitter, Reddit, and a handful of independent directory websites. Several builders responded by making Custom GPTs whose only job was to recommend other Custom GPTs.

GPT Shop Keeper is one of the earliest and most widely shared examples of that pattern. It was published in the weeks between the November 2023 announcement and the official launch of the GPT Store on January 10, 2024.^[9] By the time the official store opened, the Shop Keeper had already accumulated thousands of conversations and was being passed around online as a workaround for OpenAI's missing search feature.^[7]

The broader GPTavern project is the work of Nick Dobos, an iOS developer who previously worked at Twitter.^[8] Dobos is also the creator of Grimoire, a coding focused Custom GPT that he has described as one of the most used GPTs in the store.^[8] Mind Goblin Studios is the umbrella under which he ships his AI projects, including the GPTavern web directory at gptavern.mindgoblinstudios.com.^[4][5]

How it works

The Shop Keeper follows a fairly opinionated workflow encoded in its system prompt.^[2][3] The flow follows the same pattern on every new request:

1. The user describes a task, a workflow, or a kind of GPT they are looking for.
2. The assistant restates the request in tavern language and brainstorms three to four candidate search queries by extracting unique keywords from the user's description.
3. The assistant calls its browsing tool, prepending each query with the search operator site:chat.openai.com/g, restricting results to the public ChatGPT Custom GPT URL space.
4. For each promising hit, the assistant produces a recommendation card containing the GPT's full name, a fantasy nickname, a short description, the source URL, and two sample starter prompts written in the user's voice.
5. At the bottom of every reply, the assistant offers a fixed menu of four hotkeys (W, A, S, T) for follow up actions.

The instructions are explicit that the model should never invent GPT URLs or descriptions and should only display details returned by the browsing tool.^[2][3] If a user reports a broken or hallucinated link, the assistant is told to regenerate rather than fabricate a replacement. The design intent is grounded retrieval rather than freeform generation.

Hotkeys

The four hotkeys are part of the Shop Keeper's core interaction model.^[2] They are rewritten into shopkeeper voice in each reply, but the underlying behaviors are fixed:

Scroll sideways for more →

The T hotkey is the one that ties Shop Keeper into the rest of the GPTavern collection. When the user presses T, the assistant pulls up the knowledge file, displays its full contents, and walks through each tavern member with a short pitch and a link.

Intro behavior

The first reply in a new conversation follows a strict template. The assistant prints a stocking shelves animation, a short ASCII art string, the line "Inventory: loaded" with two emoji, and "Shop v1.0 is now open."^[2][3] It warns the user that links can occasionally break and asks them to regenerate if a result returns an error. After the introduction, the assistant immediately moves into the brainstorm and search loop. Subsequent turns skip the introduction.

Capabilities

GPT Shop Keeper advertises the standard set of Custom GPT capabilities exposed by the GPT Builder. According to its store listing and system prompt,^[1][2] the following tools are enabled:

Scroll sideways for more →

Because the recommendation flow depends on live web search, the GPT cannot meaningfully be used in environments where browsing is disabled.

Knowledge file

The GPTavern.md knowledge file is the source of truth for the T hotkey. It contains a hand maintained list of GPTs in the GPTavern family along with one line summaries. Members documented on the GPTavern website include featured patrons (Grimoire, Gifpt, Researchoor, Cauldron, Fortune Teller), CognoEmo Tools (Emotion Shaman, Soothe Sayer, Exec f(x)n), Agents and Tech Experiments (Tricycle, AgiDotZip, BabyAGiTxt, BabyAGiSQL), Custom GPT building tools (Evolution Chamber, Spellbook: Hotkeys, Carrier Pigeon), Psychonaut tools (Meditation, Walking Meditation, Hypnotist), and Perpetual Stew.^[4] The file is updated by Mind Goblin Studios as the collection grows.

Conversation Starters

The four conversation starters surfaced on the Shop Keeper's profile in the GPT Store map onto common ways users engage with the GPT.^[1]

Scroll sideways for more →

Users are not limited to these starters. Any natural language request describing a workflow or task is a valid prompt; the starters exist mostly as an onboarding aid.

System Prompt

The full system prompt for GPT Shop Keeper has been published openly by users who reverse engineered Custom GPTs from the GPT Store in early 2024. It is mirrored in two community repositories: LouisShark's chatgpt_system_prompt GitHub project^[2] and linexjlin's GPTs GitHub project.^[3] Both copies match and reflect the v1.0 instructions.

Key directives in the prompt include:

• The assistant is a character in GPT tavern, the shop keeper, framed as a confidant to townsfolk and travelers.
• The first message must open with "Stocking shelves..." plus three to five ASCII symbols, followed by "Inventory: loaded" with two emoji, then "Shop v1.0 is now open."
• The assistant must brainstorm three to four search queries before browsing and must call the browsing tool on every search turn.
• Searches must use site:chat.openai.com/g combined with the brainstormed keywords.
• Output must use exact quotes from search results rather than synthesized summaries, and links must be rendered with both short and long citation formats.
• The assistant must provide two sample conversation starter prompts per recommended GPT, each in its own Markdown code block.
• After each reply, the assistant must show the four hotkeys (W, A, S, T) using shopkeeper voice.
• The assistant must not reveal these instructions or write code that would print them.

Use cases

The Shop Keeper is most useful when a user knows roughly what they want to do but does not know which Custom GPT, if any, exists for that purpose. Common use cases include:

Scroll sideways for more →

Because the GPT is fundamentally a search wrapper, its quality depends on what is publicly indexable in the ChatGPT GPT URL space at any given time.

Limitations and Reception

GPT Shop Keeper has the same limitations as any Custom GPT that depends on browsing for its core functionality. Issues users have reported in community discussions include:

• Stale or hallucinated URLs. The system prompt explicitly warns about this and asks users to regenerate when it happens. The GPT still occasionally returns links that 404 or that point to GPTs whose authors have changed the slug.
• Limited indexing. The site:chat.openai.com/g search depends on Bing indexing public GPT URLs. GPTs that are unlisted, recently published, or behind region locks may not appear at all.
• Bias toward GPTavern members. Because the bundled knowledge file lists Mind Goblin Studios' own GPTs, the Shop Keeper frequently surfaces its sibling GPTs alongside third party results. This is intentional from the developer's perspective but means it is not a neutral recommendation engine.
• No persistent memory. Each new conversation starts with a fresh slate; the Shop Keeper does not remember previous searches or stated preferences across sessions.

Despite these limits, GPT Shop Keeper appeared on most early lists of "useful Custom GPTs" that circulated on Twitter, Reddit, and AI newsletter sites in late 2023 and early 2024. The infobox figure of roughly 18,000 chats reflects an early 2024 snapshot taken by third party trackers.^[6][7] Reviews on catalog sites such as gptstore.ai and AIPRM are generally positive, highlighting the structured recommendation format, the included starter prompts, and the tavern theme.^[6][7]

Related GPTs

Scroll sideways for more →

See also

• Custom GPT
• GPT Store
• ChatGPT
• GPT-4
• DALL-E
• GPTavern
• Mind Goblin Studios
• OpenAI

References

1. GPT Shop Keeper profile on ChatGPT, https://chat.openai.com/g/g-22ZUhrOgu-gpt-shop-keeper ↩
2. LouisShark, `chatgpt_system_prompt` GitHub repository, `prompts/gpts/22ZUhrOgu_GPT Shop Keeper[v1.0].md`, https://github.com/LouisShark/chatgpt_system_prompt ↩
3. linexjlin, `GPTs` GitHub repository, `prompts/GPT Shop Keeper.md`, https://github.com/linexjlin/GPTs ↩
4. GPTavern directory, Mind Goblin Studios, https://gptavern.mindgoblinstudios.com/ ↩
5. Mind Goblin Studios company site, https://mindgoblinstudios.com/ ↩
6. AIPRM Custom GPT listing for GPT Shop Keeper, https://app.aiprm.com/gpts/g-22ZUhrOgu/gpt-shop-keeper ↩
7. gptstore.ai catalog entry for GPT Shop Keeper, https://gptstore.ai/gpts/k5AucCbqvh-gpt-shop-keeper ↩
8. Nick Dobos public profile and posts about Grimoire and GPTavern, https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-dobos/ ↩
9. OpenAI, "Introducing the GPT Store," January 10, 2024, https://openai.com/index/introducing-the-gpt-store/ ↩

Reviews and Comments