Sponsored by
Most people write one line to Claude and hope for the best. Then they wonder why the answer feels generic. The gap usually isn't the model. It's the prompt.
Below are ten habits worth building into how you write requests. None of them are tricks in the magic sense. They're just the difference between telling Claude what you want and assuming it already knows.
Name the scope
Vague requests get vague answers. If you want a specific output, name the boundaries. Say what the output is, what order it should follow, and where it should stop. A prompt like write about marketing gives Claude too much room to guess. A prompt like write three LinkedIn post ideas for a bakery launching a subscription box gives it a shape to fill.
Want chef-crafted, dietitian-designed meals ready in 2 minutes?
Try Factor, America's #1 ready-to-eat meal delivery service.
Made from ingredients you recognize. Whole food. Nothing unnecessary. Let’s eat real.
Get 50% off your first Factor box + Free Breakfast for a year *1 free breakfast item per box for 1 year while subscription active.
Define the length
If you want something short, say short. If you want a paragraph, say paragraph. If you want five bullet points, say five. Claude will match whatever length feels reasonable if you don't specify one, and reasonable to a model isn't always reasonable to you.
Use positive instructions
Tell Claude what to do, not what to avoid. Write in plain English a sixteen year old could read aloud works better than don't use jargon. Positive instructions give the model something to build toward. Negative instructions only tell it what to dodge, which leaves the actual direction open.
Use action verbs
Verbs that ship work better than verbs that describe. Find, write, compare, rewrite, score, summarize. These give Claude a job. Words like explore or discuss tend to produce longer, softer answers because there's no clear finish line.
Call the tools yourself
If your task needs current information, say so directly. Use web search. Verify claims. Cite sources. Claude has access to these tools, but it won't always reach for them unless you ask. This matters most for anything involving recent events, prices, or data that changes.
Set the tone
If you want a certain voice, show it. Paste two or three sentences written the way you want the output to sound, then ask Claude to match that rhythm. This works better than describing tone in the abstract, since words like professional or casual mean different things to different people.
Holiday Creator Calendars Are Filling Up. Q4 Panic Is Optional.
Creators lock in holiday calendars 90 days out, before brands finalize commission strategy and long before Black Friday.
The 90-Day Holiday Sprint guide from Levanta helps brands get creators driving holiday demand while competitors are still recruiting, from commission structure to onboarding to scaling.
Your 90-day countdown starts now.
Push past the obvious answer
For creative work, the first response is often the safest one. Ask Claude to go beyond the basics when you want less predictable ideas. This is useful for brainstorming, headlines, or anything where the first draft tends to be the most generic one.
Ask for more reasoning
Adding a line like think before answering, use maximum reasoning can change how carefully Claude works through a problem, especially for anything with multiple steps or tradeoffs. It won't fix a badly framed question, but it helps with genuinely hard ones.
Turn repeat prompts into reusable ones
If you find yourself writing the same instructions more than once, that's a sign to save them. A prompt you use weekly is worth turning into a template you can paste and adjust, rather than rebuilding from memory each time.
Be literal
Spell out format, length, tone, and order directly. Claude follows explicit instructions more reliably than implied ones. If you know exactly what you want, say it plainly instead of hinting at it.
None of these habits are complicated. They just require deciding what you want before you type, instead of after you see what comes back.
This newsletter can't do that thinking for you. What it can do is keep putting these habits in front of you until they become automatic. The actual improvement happens the next time you sit down and write a prompt with more care than the one before it. Read enough of these, and that shift starts to stick on its own.
Every Market on Earth. Open 24/7. All in Your Pocket.
Markets don't wait for Monday. News breaks on a Saturday morning, and most traders can do nothing but watch.
Not on Liquid. Trade domestic and international equities, commodities, forex, crypto, and prediction markets — all from one account, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Liquid gives you access to any market, from anywhere, anytime. To us, access is arbitrage.
Getting started takes under 10 minutes: log in with Google, deposit with Apple Pay or a bank transfer, and trade from your phone or desktop — wherever you are in the world.
While everyone else is refreshing headlines and waiting for the open, you're already positioned. That's the difference between reacting to markets and actually trading them.
