Prompting Basics: How to Ask Claude Well
The single biggest lever on answer quality is how you ask. Simple, practical prompting tips for beginners, with before-and-after examples.
You don't need special syntax or «prompt engineering» tricks to get great answers from Claude — you just need to be clear. A prompt is simply the message you send. The clearer it is about what you want, who it's for, and what «good» looks like, the better the result.
Four Things a Good Prompt Includes
| Include | Why | Example phrase |
|---|---|---|
| The task | Say exactly what you want done | "Rewrite this email to be shorter and friendlier." |
| The context | Give the background Claude needs | "It's going to a client who's annoyed about a delay." |
| The format | Tell Claude the shape of the answer | "Give me three options as a bulleted list." |
| The constraints | State limits and must-haves | "Keep it under 100 words, no jargon." |
Before and After
| Weak prompt | Stronger prompt |
|---|---|
| "Write about our new feature." | "Write a 2-sentence announcement of our new dark-mode feature for non-technical users, upbeat but not salesy." |
| "Fix my code." | "This Python function throws a KeyError on empty input. Here's the code and the error — find the bug and explain the fix." |
A Few More Tips
- It's a conversation — if the first answer isn't right, just say what to change. You don't have to nail it in one message.
- Ask Claude to «think step by step» for tricky reasoning, or to «ask me questions first» if the task is open-ended.
- Paste real examples of the style or format you want — Claude will match them.
- For repeated tasks with the same rules, set them once in a Project instead of retyping them.