Chapter 09 · Power tools
Good habits
Anthropic publishes official best practices learned from thousands of sessions. Here they are as nine plain-language habits. Master the first three and you're ahead of most users.
1 · Give Claude a way to check its own work
The single biggest upgrade. If Claude can test the result itself, it fixes its own mistakes instead of waiting for you to spot them.
| Instead of | Say |
|---|---|
| "make the page look better" | "here's a screenshot of what I want [paste image] — match it, screenshot your result, compare, and fix the differences" |
| "fix the signup form" | "the signup form fails when the name has spaces. Fix it, then test with 'Ana Maria Silva' to prove it works" |
2 · Explore, plan, then build
For anything beyond a small tweak: enter plan mode, let Claude read and propose, approve the plan, then let it build. Skipping the plan on big tasks is how you get a confident solution to the wrong problem. (For tiny fixes, skip the ceremony and just ask.)
3 · Be specific
Claude can't read your mind. Name the file (@menu.html), describe the symptom, say what "done" looks like. One precise sentence beats three vague ones.
4 · Correct early, don't argue long
Press Esc the moment things drift; a small nudge early beats a big fix later. And if two corrections haven't landed, stop: /clear and re-ask with what you learned. A fresh start beats a polluted conversation.
5 · One topic per conversation
/clear between unrelated tasks. Mixing your homepage, your taxes, and a bug hunt in one session fills Claude's memory with noise, and quality drops.
6 · Keep CLAUDE.md short
Every line competes for attention. Rules Claude keeps missing usually mean the file is too long, not that Claude is stubborn. The test for each line: would removing it cause mistakes?
7 · Ask for evidence, not promises
Have Claude show the test output, the command it ran, the screenshot. "It works" is a claim; a passing test is proof. If you can't verify it, don't ship it.
8 · Send research off to the side
"Investigate everything" fills the context window fast. Scope it ("look only in the menu files"), or let a subagent do the digging and report back the short version.
9 · Be fearless; you have undo
Between permission prompts, rewind, and git, almost nothing is irreversible. Beginners improve by trying ambitious things, watching what Claude does, and asking "why did you do it that way?". Claude is also very good at teaching Claude: ask it to explain any of this guide's topics with your own project as the example.
Habits in hand? The idea gallery next door is full of prompts to spend them on. Come back any time; Ctrl K finds everything, and the official docs go deeper on every topic.