Writing a request that works
- 01The three blocks of a request6 min
A request that works separates three blocks, what Claude must be, what has already been said, and what is being asked now, and an explicit instruction gives a more reliable result than a vague instruction left to Claude's judgement.
- 02Being clear, direct, and giving the why6 min
Claude behaves like a brilliant new employee with no implicit context about your habits, so a request benefits from stating the why and who will read or hear the response, not just the task to carry out.
- 03Assigning a role6 min
A one-sentence role, placed at the start of a conversation or a project, shapes Claude's tone, vocabulary and priorities, and a single sentence is already enough to make that difference.
- 04Separating data from instructions7 min
Mixing instructions and data in a single block of text creates confusion, whereas a clear boundary, an XML tag, a heading, a code block or a marking line, removes it.
- 05Formatting the output and speaking on Claude's behalf7 min
Specifying the exact format expected, down to explicitly forbidding any opening sentence, removes unnecessary preambles and malformed output, whereas the historical technique of writing the very first character of Claude's response yourself is no longer available on current models.
- 06Making Claude reason before concluding7 min
Asking Claude to write out its reasoning before its conclusion improves accuracy on multi-step questions, whether that reasoning is invited by a sentence in the request or is already active as a standalone mode, and both versions consume extra tokens.
- 07Showing the target rather than forbidding6 min
Three to five input to output examples anchor a format or a tone better than a long list of rules, and a positive instruction gives a clear target where a purely negative instruction leaves Claude guessing what to replace it with.
- 08Composing a complex request without inventing8 min
A complex request is composed piece by piece, who Claude should be, the context, the data to process, what is being asked, an example, the expected format, then a final line that allows Claude to say I do not know rather than invent an answer.
- 09Making a working request last and reusing it6 min
A request that works is refined in small touches rather than started over from scratch, and then fixed into a reusable template where only the part that changes from one task to the next gets replaced.