A simple guide to getting started with Elderwell.
Elderwell currently includes Reflective Mentors, Educational Studios, and an Elderwell reasoning and judgment game, all accessed through the ChatGPT platform.
Most people can access them using a free ChatGPT account.
Steps:
- Create a free account at the ChatGPT website if you do not already have one.
- Open the Elderwell Mentor or Studio you would like to use.
- Begin by asking a question that matters to you.
You can use the Mentors, Studios or the game as often as you like, and return to conversations whenever you wish.
Choosing the Right Part of Elderwell
Elderwell Tool
Personal Mentor
Civic Mentor
Future Pathways Mentor
The Agora
Counselling Skills Studio
Differential Diagnosis Studio
Mysteries & Dilemmas
Purpose
Reflect on personal dilemmas, values, and life decisions.
Explore public issues, politics, institutions, and social systems.
Think more clearly about uncertainty, long-range change, and possible futures.
Learn about philosophy by practicing philosophy. Test your beliefs in the Agora.
Practise counselling skills through roleplay, feedback, and supervisor-style review.
Practice differential diagnosis and clinical reasoning, with structured supervisor feedback.
A game for better questions. Follow clues. Navigate dilemmas. Solve mysteries. Make the call.
If a question touches more than one area, that is completely fine. Many questions do. You do not need special prompts to use Elderwell well — a real question, concern, or area of practice is usually enough. Begin with a question that genuinely matters to you.
Privacy and AI Training Settings
Some users prefer to ensure that their conversations are not used to train AI systems.
On the ChatGPT platform you can adjust this setting.
General steps:
- Open Settings in your ChatGPT account.
- Go to Data Controls.
- Turn off the option that allows your chats to be used for model training.
This prevents your conversations from being used to improve the system.
Users should check the latest platform guidance for the most current instructions.
Using Elderwell Thoughtfully
The Elderwell tools are designed to support reflection, learning and development.
Important: Elderwell is intended to support reflection, perspective, and structured educational practice. It does not provide professional, legal, financial, medical, or mental health advice. Any decisions or actions taken after using Elderwell remain the responsibility of the user, and where needed, users should seek guidance from a qualified professional familiar with their circumstances.
The Mentors, Studios and the Agora are not substitutes for professional advice, accredited training, live supervision, or qualified care in areas such as medical treatment, legal matters, or mental health support.
If you are dealing with serious personal or professional situations, it may be helpful to consult qualified professionals in those fields.
A Note on Reflection
The Elderwell tools work best when approached with curiosity, honesty, and openness.
They are designed to help people examine questions, consider perspectives, deepen understanding, and strengthen judgment over time.
Begin with a question, concern, or area of practice that genuinely matters to you.
A Note on the Creative Process
The Elderwell Initiative is a human-led AI collaboration.
The tools, prompts, frameworks, demonstrations, and reflections have been designed, tested, challenged, and refined through sustained interaction between Marc Croker, ChatGPT, and Claude.
The AI tools contribute language, structure, simulation, critique, and rapid iteration; the human role is to hold the purpose, set the ethical boundaries, test the outputs, judge what is useful, and curate the final form.
Elderwell is not simply written by AI, nor is it created without AI. It is built through an ongoing partnership between human judgement and AI capability.