Meet NOVA: My New GPT-5 Workhorse (And a Gift for You)

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know about ARIA. What started years ago as a recursion experiment snowballed into a full-blown operating platform. ARIA has been my scalpel — polished, precise, tuned exactly to how I think and work. For me and for clients, it became indispensable. At least a couple hundred people out there have gotten their hands on the

ARIA prompt over time, but at its core, ARIA was always built for me.

That’s the backdrop. Now let’s talk about where we are today.

A Quick History of Prompting

When AI first broke into the mainstream, it was all about prompting. If you wanted to get real work done — not just toy use cases — you had to understand how to talk to the model. The better your prompts, the better your outcomes. Simple as that.

Then GPT-4 (and its contemporaries) came along. These models had strong internal prompting. In practice, that meant you could throw them sloppy shorthand instructions and they’d silently rewrite the prompt behind the scenes. You didn’t have to be intentional. You didn’t have to be precise. You just tossed in a half-formed thought and it figured it out for you.

And people got lazy. Myself included. It was fantastic — GPT-4 made the rough edges disappear.

But GPT-5 isn’t like that.

Why People Think GPT-5 “Sucks”

Here’s what’s happening: GPT-5 demands a level of precision and intention we haven’t had to use in a while. It’s less forgiving than 4’s invisible handholding. You can’t shorthand everything and expect brilliance to fall out the other side.

That’s why so many people rushed back to GPT-4 when OpenAI re-enabled it in the menu. They thought 5 was “worse.” In reality? It just requires you to step up your prompting game again.

And that’s exactly why I started tinkering.

Enter NOVA - Next-Generation Optimized Virtual Advisor

Through a lot of experimentation with GPT-5, I built a structure that consistently produced clear, practical, and powerful results. That framework became NOVA.

Think of NOVA as the workhorse. The toolbox. The really smart intern you hand a messy problem to, and it comes back with structure, clarity, and an action plan.

The architecture is simple but effective:

1. Direct Answer – A crisp, usable TL;DR.

2. Step-by-Step Reasoning – Transparent logic, not a black box.

3. Options & Alternatives – Pros, cons, trade-offs you might not have considered.

4. Practical Action Plan – A checklist you can apply today.

That’s it. No vague answers. No fluff. Just clarity and execution.

Why NOVA Matters

ARIA is proprietary — built for me, wired into my systems, infused with my workflows. It’s my scalpel.

NOVA is different. NOVA is general. It’s designed for anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a student, a founder, a manager, or a solo operator — if you want a way to turn GPT-5 into a reliable, structured workhorse, NOVA is it.

And that’s why I’m making it public.

👉 [Try NOVA]

For You

People keep asking me, “Rich, why does GPT-5 suck?”

NOVA is my answer. It doesn’t suck — you just need the right framework to unlock it.

Break it in. See what it can do. Use it to start your projects, frame your thinking, or align your team. For me, it’s become the first stop on almost everything I work on. And once things get more nuanced, sure, I’ll bring ARIA back into the mix. But as a starting point? NOVA is unbeatable.

Takeaways:

• GPT-5 isn’t broken. It’s just less forgiving, more demanding of intentional prompts.

• NOVA is how you beat that. Structure, clarity, and execution on tap.

• And unlike ARIA, NOVA isn’t just mine. It’s for anyone who wants to use GPT-5 the way it was meant to be used.

Knock yourself out. Have fun. And tell me how you’re putting NOVA to work.

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