How to Prompt: Context Is Everything

Here is the single biggest upgrade available to most AI users, and it costs nothing. Stop typing search queries. Start briefing a colleague.

When people get a flat, generic answer from Claude, the instinct is to blame the model. But run the test on yourself: if you handed your best employee the exact words you just typed, with no other information, could they have done better? Usually not. "Write me a marketing email" gets you a generic marketing email from a human too. The model is not psychic. It is brilliant at working with what you give it, and you gave it nothing.

Brief it like a sharp new colleague

Imagine a very capable person joined your business this morning. Smart, fast, tireless, but they know nothing about you yet. Every prompt is a briefing to that person. A good briefing has a handful of ingredients:

1. The goal. What you actually want to achieve, not just the artefact. "Win back a quote we lost on price" beats "write a follow up email"
2. The context. Who you are, who this is for, what has happened so far. Paste in the thread, the document, the numbers. Real material beats description every time
3. The constraints. Length, tone, things to avoid, non negotiables. "Two short paragraphs, warm but direct, no discounting"
4. An example of good. If you have a past quote, email, or report you were proud of, attach it and say "match this style." One example outranks three paragraphs of description
5. The format you want back. A table, a bullet list, a draft ready to send, three options to choose from

You will not need all five every time. But when output disappoints, the fix is almost always adding one of these, not typing the same request louder.

A quick makeover

Before: "Write a quote follow up email."

After: "You're helping me follow up a quote for a bathroom renovation, sent nine days ago, no reply. The client seemed keen on site but mentioned getting other quotes. I'd rather hold my price and win on trust and timeline. Here's the original quote email below. Draft two options, one casual and one more formal, each under 120 words, ending with a low pressure next step."

Same model, wildly different result. The second prompt took ninety seconds to write and saves twenty minutes of editing.

Then iterate, don't restart

The first draft is the start of the conversation, not the end. React to it the way you would with a person: "Option two is close, but soften the opening and mention we can start within a fortnight." Push back, ask for variations, ask it to critique its own draft against your goal. Two or three rounds of feedback routinely turns good into excellent, and it is faster than trying to write the perfect prompt up front.

One more habit worth stealing: when the task is complex, ask Claude what it needs. "Before you draft this, what context would help you do it well?" The model will interview you, and the questions are usually exactly the briefing you should have given.

The mindset shift

Prompting is not a technical skill, it is a management skill. The people who get the most out of AI are not programmers, they are good delegators: clear about outcomes, generous with context, specific with feedback. If you have ever briefed a contractor, a designer, or a new hire well, you already know how to do this.

Next in the series: how Projects let you give Claude that briefing once, so you stop repeating yourself forever.