Anthropic dropped a 31-page prompting guide, and honestly, who has time to read all that on a Tuesday? I sure don’t. Luckily, this savvy professional did the heavy lifting and squeezed the whole thing into 9 sharp tips you can absorb in about a minute.
I was genuinely impressed when I saw how the original poster compressed dense documentation into something you can actually use today. No fluff, no theory you’ll forget by lunch. Just step-by-step moves that change how Claude responds to you.
Let me walk you through each tip the way the author laid them out, with a bit of context on why each one works. If you’re tired of getting mediocre AI output, this is your fix.
The 9 prompt tips, step by step
- Name the output, not the task. Swap vague verbs like “review” or “help” for the real deliverable. Specify the format you want: table, bullets, JSON, doc. Vague verbs produce vague drafts. Name the actual thing you need on your screen.
- Define the length up front. Set the exact count. “5 bullets.” “180 words.” Name the first word of each line, like a verb or a noun. Then add “No preamble. No recap. No filler.” This kills the throat-clearing intros Claude loves to write.
- Flip every “don’t” into a “do.” Hunt down every “don’t” and “avoid” in your prompt. Rewrite each as a positive instruction. Claude 4.7 reads literally, so telling it what to write works way better than telling it what to dodge.
- Lead with action. Cut “Can you help me with…” entirely. Start every line with a command verb: Write. Find. Draft. Send. Politeness costs tokens. Action ships work.
- Force maximum reasoning. Pick Opus 4.7 with Adaptive thinking turned on. Close your prompt with “Think before answering.” Opus 4.7 reasons on demand, not by default, so you have to ask for the deep thinking explicitly.
- Add “Go beyond the basics.” Paste that exact phrase on every creative task. Raise the bar: “Polish like a real client deliverable.” Ban the lazy defaults, like “no purple gradients” for design work. Set the ceiling, not just the floor.
- Upload your voice. Write 2 or 3 sentences in exactly how you actually talk. Tell Claude: “Match the style of these examples.” Save them in an “about-me” file and reuse them across every chat, forever.
- Control tools on purpose. For research tasks, say: “Use search. 2+ sources per claim.” For speed, say: “Answer from training. No search.” Claude Opus 4.7 calls fewer tools by default, so you need to nudge it either direction.
- State the goal before the task. Open with “Goal: [what winning looks like].” Name the audience, like “for a CRO, not an engineer.” A prompt without a goal is a wish. State the win, then ask for the work.
Why these tips actually move the needle
Most prompting advice floating around is generic and dated. What I love about this list from the original creator is how surgical it is. Each tip targets a specific failure mode you’ve probably hit a hundred times.
Take tip 3 about flipping negatives. If you’ve ever told Claude “don’t be too formal” and gotten a stiff corporate response anyway, this is why. The model anchors on what you mention, not how you frame it. Tell it to be casual instead. Night and day difference.
Tip 5 is the one I’d argue is most underused. Almost nobody types “Think before answering” at the end of their prompts. But on Opus 4.7, that single sentence flips on extended reasoning and the output quality jumps noticeably.
How to actually use this list
Don’t try to memorize all 9 tips at once. That’s a recipe for forgetting them by Friday. Here’s the rollout the post’s author basically implies:
- Week 1: Focus on tips 1, 2, and 4. These fix the structural problems in your prompts immediately. Name the output, set the length, lead with action.
- Week 2: Layer in tips 3 and 9. Audit your existing prompts for negatives and missing goals. Rewrite a few of your most-used prompts.
- Week 3: Build your voice file (tip 7) and start using tips 5, 6, and 8 on tasks that justify the extra effort. Creative work, research, anything that has to ship to a real audience.
The compounding effect here is real. After two or three weeks of writing prompts this way, the old style feels lazy. You stop accepting mid-quality output because you know exactly which knob fixes which problem.
The mindset shift
What this innovator is really teaching isn’t a list of tricks. It’s a shift from talking to Claude like a coworker to briefing it like a contractor. You define the deliverable, the constraints, the audience, the standard, and the reasoning depth. Then you let it work.
That mindset, plus these 9 tips, gets you 80% of what a so-called “prompt engineer” knows. The rest is just reps.
Check out the full LinkedIn post for the original phrasing and a few extra notes from the author. Worth a read if you’re serious about getting better output from Claude.