No, that's how it is. My MO is now I type in the question to the chat; go to another tab to google a bit on the background of the problem; by the time ChatGPT is done, I already know enough to have a reasonable idea about whether what it came up with is in the general direction of where I want to go. And if it is, I'm usually confident enough that it gets the details then mostly right.
One meta comment is that I would love for something like a Greasemonkey script that can automatically add some checkboxes or something that will then automatically add stock phrases to ChatGPT questions, like 'show me only the code', as I find that a lot of the intro fluff and the explanation of things are useless to me and just take up time. In general, the UI is pretty bare bones, there's a world to be gained there.
Check out alternatives like ChatWithGPT[0] or just the OpenAI chat playground[1], especially if you've gotten access to the GPT4 API. Populating the system message really makes a difference and you can enforce a lot of style of both code and output. The third party UIs also have a lot more bells and whistles.
One meta comment is that I would love for something like a Greasemonkey script that can automatically add some checkboxes or something that will then automatically add stock phrases to ChatGPT questions, like 'show me only the code', as I find that a lot of the intro fluff and the explanation of things are useless to me and just take up time. In general, the UI is pretty bare bones, there's a world to be gained there.